I love museums!  My parents, especially my father, started taking me to science museums and zoos in the Chicago area from a very young age.  I grew up amongst such diverse distractions as dinosaurs, lunar landing modules, ancient Egyptian culture, and dolphin shows!

So when I had an opportunity to tour the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Rayleigh, NC during Science Online 2012, I jumped at the chance!  In fact, I had two chances: the conference reception was held in the museum on Thursday evening, and I signed up for a tour of the facility on Friday afternoon, including some fascinating behind-the-scenes peeks.

It is a wonderful museum, one which is in the process of completing a major expansion to be opened in April.  I thought I’d share some of the photos I took during the trip.

The beginning of our tour focused on some of the unusual natural phenomena to be found in North Carolina itself; many of these have been featured in my Twitter #weirdscifacts this past week!  One of the things I learned: the Carolinas used to be home to the only parrot species native to the eastern United States, the Carolina parakeet, now sadly extinct.

Carolina parakeet

The main floor of the museum also has some magnificent skeletons of whales; the image below is the skeleton of a right whale that was killed in 1876.

Right whale, killed in 1876

The bones of animals are more than decoration; they can often provide evidence of an animal’s life and travails.  For instance, later in our tour, we were shown a fossilized whale rib, which has scratches on it from shark teeth:

Fossilized whale rib

Occasionally, things other than bones can become fossilized, potentially providing a rare glimpse at other aspects of a long-extinct animal’s physiology.  For instance, the museum has a specimen of Thescelosaurus, named “Willo“, found in the Hell Creek formation of northwestern South Dakota.  Willo is almost unique in that it may contain the remains of the dinosaur’s heart!

Thescelosaurus "Willo"

Unfortunately, as I understand it, it is still not entirely clear that the reddish mass in Willo’s chest is in fact a heart and not some naturally occurring formation.

Some specimens are truly impressive!  One of my favorite prehistoric creatures is the giant ground sloth, which in geological terms went extinct practically yesterday:

Giant ground sloth

Other impressive specimens abound!  One of the jewels of the museum’s collection is an Acrocanthosaurus skeleton (Dr. Matthew Francis’ head in photo for scale):

Acrocanthosaurus skeleton

To me, perhaps the most interesting part of the museum was the exhibit about the museum’s history itself: the”museum within a museum”, or “meta-museum”, if you will!  This included a replica of the 1910 workshop of the first curator of the museum, H.H. Brimley:

Replica of 1910 office of H.H. Brimley

It is easy to forget how dramatically museums have changed!  The NCMNS illustrates this with a WWII-era exhibit of a Japanese doll:

Japanese doll

The doll is cute, but the preserved caption is fascinating:

Caption of the "Friendship Doll"

After seeing the public area of the museum, we were treated to a tour of its working areas.  It is easy to forget that natural science museums are typically active research institutions, with a lot of things going on behind the scenes.  We first visited the collections room where the biological specimens are preserved and stored.

Working area of the specimen room

The chamber is truly impressive, lined with cabinets filled with a variety of animal specimens, from bats to birds to primates:

Specimen cabinets

These very silent corridors have a very eerie feel to them, and are filled with preserved specimens not on exhibit:

We moved on from an examination of the animal specimens to a look at fossil remains; here physicist Dr. Matthew Francis got an unpleasant surprise:

Dr. Matthew Francis' unpleasant surprise

I should mention that one of the bonus joys of the tour was going through the museum with Brian Switek of Laelaps and Scicurious of The Scicurious Brain!  Scicurious’ enthusiasm is infectious, and she was filled with fascinating questions that the guides were often hard-pressed to answer!  Brian’s paleontology expertise really showed when looking at the fossils, and he had many intriguing observations to make about specimens that were otherwise unlabeled.  For instance, he spotted the skull of a juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex wrapped up off to one side:

Juvenile t-rex skull, upside down

I stuck pretty close to Brian and Sci during the tour; I was always interested to hear what they would see or say next!

We were treated to one more interesting specimen: an excellently preserved Edmontosaurus from Hell Creek:

In addition to getting a behind-the-scenes tour of the specimen rooms and labs, during the Science Online reception we were also treated to a “sneak peek” at the new wing of the museum, currently under construction and due to open on April 20 of this year.  The centerpiece of this Nature Research Center will be the SECU Daily Planet, a 3-story globe which will serve as a multimedia center for live science news and presentations.  I took a mini-panorama of the view from the 3rd floor:

The center will include active research labs, and the public will get the opportunity to ask scientists questions about their research!  There’s still a lot of construction to get done by the 20th of April, however, as indicated by a variety of ironically-labelled touchscreens:

Ironically-labelled touchscreens!

I’m looking forward to the opening!  I probably won’t make it there right away, but the Nature Research Center will be open for a full 24 hours on the first day.

I really enjoyed my visit to the museum; looking forward to my next opportunity to visit and to see the new wing!

When I was starting out as a student of physics, most of the stories I heard about the history of physics were anecdotes about the eccentric behaviors of various famous figures.  There is so much more that we can learn from the history of science, however, and at the same time that we entertain people with stories from the past we can educate them about how science works.

This was, in essence, the idea behind a session co-moderated by myself and Brian Malow (Science Comedian) at Science Online 2012, “Weird and Wonderful Stories in the History of Science”.  We asked people to share their weird stories of science and tried to provide some thoughts on the lessons that those stories taught.  What follows is a rough transcript of the stories & events of the session.  At the end, we also had a bit of a discussion of books that tell excellent stories about historical science; a list of those books is provided at the end of the post!

Tom Swanson opened the discussion with an anecdote about wine! (Highly appropriate for this meeting.)  Now that science is learning more about the process of wine aging, others are taking advantage of that knowledge to “fake” bottles of old wine.  This story is a fascinating example of how good science can be manipulated to both good and nefarious purposes.

I mentioned one of my favorite stories: “Lewis and Clark and the grizzly bears“!  When Lewis & Clark set off in 1804 on the first transcontinental expedition, they were tasked with collecting scientific information as well as commercial.  As they progressed west, they were warned by natives that the bears in that direction were different — and far more dangerous than any others they had encountered.  L&C dismissed these views at first, until they started to have encounters with the highly aggressive and nigh-indestructible creatures.  One spectacular incident involved a group of the explorers being charged by a grizzly that shrugged off their gunfire; the men leaped off a 20-foot cliff to escape — and the bear cannonballed in after them!  Even after their first few harrowing encounters, Lewis wrote, “I find that the curiossity of our party is pretty well satisfyed with rispect to this anamal.” To me, this story gives at least two good lessons about science: the significance of native knowledge (Lewis & Clark should have paid more attention to the natives’ warnings) and the dangers of technological hubris (L&C were confident that their guns would easily handle any threat they encountered.)  I’ll blog more about “Lewis and Clark and the grizzly bears” in the near future…

Romeo Vitelli followed up with another anecdote about Lewis & Clark.  The explorers brought with them a large quantity of dubious emergency medicine: the Bilious Pills of Dr. Benjamin Rush.  Hawked as a cure-all, the pills in fact contained large quantities of mercury, now known to be toxic!  (To me, this story highlights how little we understood about medicine and health even such a short time ago.)

Greg Laden provided an anecdote about German refugee Gunter Holzmann, whose rheumatoid arthritis began acting up in the Bolivian jungle in the 1970s.  He was told by the natives to go get bitten by some ants, and this helped immensely with the pain!  Again we learn the importance of native knowledge.  Furthermore, Greg pointed out that such discoveries show what we can lose when native languages disappear: the medical/scientific knowledge contained in those languages can vanish along with them.

Maggie Koerth-Baker shared an amusing and enlightening story about Thomas Edison’s early implementation of electrical power!  In 1882, a faulty junction box turned one New York City intersection into a gigantic joy-buzzer for horses.  Edison was actually approached by an entrepreneur the next day who wanted to install a similar system in his horse stalls, to make old nags seem like thoroughbreds!  To me, this story shows how new technology can have unintended consequences, and surprising applications (though, thankfully, it does not seem that Edison helped out the man with his electric stables).

Thinking of Edison, Brian Malow brought up the (in hindsight) amusing and hostile rivalry between Edison and Nikola Tesla to dominate the electrical power industry, in what is now often referred to as the “War of the Currents“.  One quote stood out: Tesla, bashing Edison’s style of research, commented, “If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor.”  To me, this is both an illustration of how strong personalities can shape the nature of scientific discourse.  It is also a good illustration of how different styles of research can produce equally effective results (despite Tesla’s gripes, it is clear that Edison and Tesla were both very successful scientist/engineers).

Next, Amy Shira Teitel shared with us a wonderful story that she has recently uncovered about the space race: the problem of swearing astronauts!  Those pioneers traveling to the Moon were often overwhelmed by the amazing sights they were seeing, and bad words would slip out.  This was bad because their communications with mission control were being broadcast live around the globe.  One astronaut was so accustomed to cursing when his mind wandered that NASA had to take more elaborate steps to keep him in check — read the post to see what!  This story really puts a human face on those brave folks who traveled at great risk to explore the reaches outside of our atmosphere.

Marriane (whose twitter handle I did not get) shared an anecdote about a female researcher who did very good research on cockroach biology.  She chose this particular creature to study because they were in abundance in the basement of the research lab!  This tale both highlights the challenges that women in science have had to face throughout the years, and also shows that research is often guided by what is convenient, or possible.  There’s a lesson here about making more science funding available, I’m sure…

Cedar Reiner brought us back to the influence of Thomas Jefferson on science (Jefferson also sent Lewis & Clark off on their expedition) and told the story of “Jefferson and the Giant Moose“!  In the early years of the United States, Old World naturalists were convinced that the natural flora and fauna of the New World was “degenerate”, or inherently “weaker” than magnificent Old World life.  Jefferson sought to counter this by sending a giant specimen of a bull moose to the Comte de Buffon!  This story illustrates the power of backyard citizen science (the hunt for the giant moose) as well as the significant influence that science and politics can have on one another.

Dr. Rubidium brought us back down to Earth a bit with the sad story of Fritz Haber, 1918 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry but also the “father of chemical warfare”.  Haber’s wife and son would commit suicide over his work on such hideous weapons, and the Nazis expanded his research in the development of Zyklon B, used in the gas chambers of the Holocaust.  Haber’s sad story is a reminder that the life and work of many scientists is complicated: we should be careful about putting scientists “on a pedestal”.

David Manly introduced us to some current research, with lessons of its own!  The axolotl is an amazing species of salamander that can regrow limbs and skin, and recover from spinal damage seemingly without limit, and is furthermore incredibly cancer resistant.  Does this research bode well for human regeneration?  The researcher himself is somewhat doubtful that the work will go that far.  Then why do it?  ”Because it’s cool!”  Lots of great science is done simply for the fascination of it, though one never knows where it might lead.

Henry Reich brought us back to the past with a tragic but fascinating story of invention.  In 1949, a group of smokejumpers parachuted into the Helena National Forest in Montana to fight a fire that had been sparked in Mann Gulch.  The fire surprised the men, jumping the gulch and burning rapidly uphill towards them.  Only one man, Wagner Dodge, realized that they would be unable to outrun the fire, and he started what could be considered the first “escape fire” in modern times, burning a region free of brush that he could lie in to survive unscathed.  Though he said the idea just “came to him”, it turns out that plains Indians had used similar techniques for centuries.  Again we have a situation when native knowledge was well ahead of modern thinking!

All this talk of history, however, can make us lose site of the fact that history is being made around us all the time in science!  This was the point made by Emily Finke, who noted that amazing things are being done at places like NASA and the LHC every day, and many of these will be looked back on as historical moments/discoveries.  This was backed up by Michelle Arduengo, who shared an anedcote about the “discovery” of PubMed by her advisor (“hey, have you guys seen this?”), a tool which has transformed medical research but went unnoticed by many at its inception.

James (twitter handle?) brought up another figure who has, unfortunately, already earned himself a place in the history books!  Newt Gingrich gets a lot of credence as a “science guy” these days even though he’s basically wrong about everything he says on the subject!

Another anecdote shared was the catastrophic mistakes made by early explorers in attempting to traverse the Northwest Passage.  Poor packaging of food and an incomplete understanding of the relation between fresh fruit and scurvy led to catastrophe on more than one occasion, most infamously in the Franklin Expedition of 1845.

As a counterexample to Emily and Michelle’s earlier observations, Michelle Banks noted that some science and technological history is appreciated as it happens!  For instance, just look at twitter when Apple is announcing/releasing a new product.

Michelle Banks also shared some art history related to science with us: in early painting, Jesus was depicted without a belly button!  This is presumably because his mother was a virgin, but this explanation does not quite make sense, since she still gave birth to him.  Here we have an interesting collision of scientific ignorance and bad logic.

Greg Laden noted another interesting historical symptom of scientific ignorance.  We now know that the sea-level can vary by as much as 200 meters, depending on the behavior of the world’s glaciers.  Early naturalists were unaware of the possibility of dramatic sea level change, and instead attributed variations in coastlines and waterways as the result of variations in land height.  This is obviously wrong to modern scientists, but it took quite some time for the correct interpretation to appear.

Kaitlyn (not sure of twitter handle) took aim at a commonly-used phrase in the history of science — “On the shoulders of giants” — and noted that this phrase has a much older history than Isaac Newton — and that Newton himself was likely using it as a slur against Robert Hooke!

David Manly brought us back one more time to a discussion of the Current Wars of Tesla and Edison, and noted that Edison went so far as to electrocute animals with AC power to demonstrate the dangers of Tesla’s technique.

Finally, we had Jessica (twitter handle?) note the unusual attempts to apply penicillin soon after its discovery, including applications directly to the eyes.

All in all, it was a wonderful session — in the spirit of Science Online being an “unconference” in which the audience is expected to participate just as much or more than the moderators, we did very well!  Considering I love to hear myself talk, I was almost disappointed that there wasn’t time for me to lecture on about some of my other favorite stories!

Hopefully this summary gives an idea of the variety of stories that are out there in the history of science, and gives some indication of the lessons that can be learned from them, other then the familiar stereotype that “scientists are weird!”

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Some participants in the session I was unable to get their full names or twitter handles; if you know them (or are them), please let me know and I’ll fill in the details.

What follows is a crowdsourced list of books that tell fascinating and educational stories about the history of science.  These books are all great examples of how science history can teach us more about science, doing science, and the scientists themselves:

Sam Kean, The Disappearing Spoon

Deborah Blum, The Poisoner’s Handbook

Thomas Levenson, Newton and the Counterfeiter

Timothy Ferris, The Science of Liberty

Holly Tucker, Blood Work

Rob Dunn, Every Living Thing

Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder

Richard Conniff, The Species Seekers

Thomas Blass, The Man Who Shocked the World

Michael Faraday, The Chemical History of a Candle

John Grant, Discarded Science

Steven Johnson, Invention of Air

Mary Roach, Bonk (and others)

Any of Isaac Asimov’s books on basic science!

Any other suggestions?  Let me know in the comments!

676. Jan 18: Cows kill more people nationally every year than sharks do worldwide.  This one came from Science Online keynote speaker Mireya Mayor!  (h/t @maggiekb1)

677. Jan 19: #weirdscifacts at a bar, via @SFriedScientist : no domestic turkeys can have sex!

678. Jan 20: Sea monsters: misidentified whale penises?  I’ve heard it speculated plausibly before that many sea serpents were misidentified giant squid, but this post by @scicurious give an… alternate… interpretation to some sightings!

679. Jan 21: #weirdscifacts via @naturalsciences: the shrimp Acanthephyra purpurea “vomits” bioluminescence to blind predators! (Post by @laelaps!)

680. Jan 22: The mysterious elliptical “Carolina Bays“, of not-quite-certain origin!  (h/t @naturalsciences)

681. Jan 23: #weirdscifacts of @naturalsciences: Bladderwort, a carnivorous plant that essentially vacuums up prey through roots!

682. Jan 24: #weirdscifacts via @naturalsciences: Red-cockaded woodpecker uses tree sap to make nests too sticky 4 snakes 2 enter!

682a. Bonus #weirdscifacts via @astVintageSpace: how to keep an astronaut from swearing on the Moon?  Communication with mission control was publicly broadcast — this was a problem when one astronaut was an uncontrollable cusser!

(I posted my facts one day late this week, in solidarity with those in opposition to the very stupid SOPA/PIPA bill, for what it’s worth.)

669. Jan 11: Teletanks: the radio-controlled Soviet tanks used during WWII!  With all the recent excitement and controversy about surveillance and predator drones, it is somewhat surprising to realize that remote controlled vehicles were used so long ago.  (h/t @tobascodagama)

670. Jan 12: Parrondo’s mathematical paradox, “a losing game-playing strategy that wins”.

671. Jan 13: Granular convection, aka “Brazil nut effect“: why the biggest nuts end up on top of the pile!

672. Jan 14: The 1953 Flint-Worcester tornados — blamed by congressmen on nuclear testing.  This horrific tragedy was the result of such atypical weather that congressman incorrectly blamed it on recent nuclear testing.  (h/t @patrickneville)

673. Jan 15: The Collatz conjecture: another odd and unproven mathematical hypothesis.  (h/t @patrickneville, again!)

674. Jan 16: Icebergs can melt enough to flip over, creating big waves! This is somewhat obvious, when you think about it — a sudden collapse of a side of an iceberg can upset its balance, making it flip over.  (h/t @discoveryplace)

675. Jan 17: While imprisoned, physicist Arago relied on monkeys to groom him & keep him lice-free.  Arago was captured by the Spanish while on a ship that was transporting exotic animals to Napoleon.  He was incarcerated in a broken windmill with the animals, but they turned out to provide an important service!  (from my blog post!)

• Victorian poet scientists
• Legends of “cursed” glaciers
• A pictorial history of the mysterious wolverine (the animal, not the X-Man!)

Many thanks to Michael Barton for putting together an excellent and intriguing edition of the carnival!

We’re still desperately looking for future hosts of the carnival for the next few months!  I’m hoping, now that the holidays are behind us, that people will step forward to volunteer to host.  Please drop us a comment if you’re interested and/or send an email to one of the carnival managers.

If you asked to describe what a “typical” physicist looks and acts like, what would you say? The picture that most people would paint wouldn’t be terribly flattering, and would conform to rather negative stereotypes.  Studies have been done in which children are asked to draw a scientist, and the results are quite uniformly of the “mad scientist” variety.  Shows like “The Big Bang Theory” on television typically depict physicists* as socially inept, unathletic, genuinely unworldly individuals, conforming to stereotypes that I’ve personally been familiar with since I was very young.

Real physicists, however, are much more varied and interesting than the popular image suggests.  For example, I myself jump out of airplanes as a regular hobby, and my friends and colleagues have an incredibly diverse spectrum of backgrounds, personalities and interests.

One physicist, however, blows away the stereotypes more than any other I’ve encountered.  As the preamble above suggests, the French physicist François Arago (1786-1853) lived a lifetime’s worth of danger, adventure and intrigue in just his first 23 years of life — and he would go on to make crucial discoveries in optical science as well as become an important politician of his time.  In the course of some recent research, I happened across Arago’s autobiography of his early years, and the story it tells is remarkable and worth recounting, at least in part.  Arago’s biography was unpublished during his lifetime; in fact, it is unclear exactly when he wrote it or who the intended audience was.  What is clear, however, is that François Arago was a badass, and his story should be “exhibit A” whenever someone dredges up tired stereotypes about the demeanor and toughness of scientific persons.

Arago was born in 1786, entering the world on the verge of one of the most tumultuous periods in French history.  Only three years later, the French Revolution would begin, culminating in the bloody Reign of Terror of 1793-1794.  Such would be Arago’s later reputation, that he even needed to comment on his role in said revolution:

I was born on the 26th of February, 1786, in the commune of Estagel, an ancient province of Roussillon (department of the Eastern Pyrenees).  My father, a licentiate in law, had some little property in arable land, in vineyards, and in plantations of olive-trees, the income from which supported his numerous family.

I was thus three years old in 1789, four years old in 1790, five years in 1791, six years in 1792, and seven years old in 1793, &c.

The reader has now himself the means of judging whether, as has been said, and even stated in print, I had a hand in the excesses of our first revolution.

Arago was raised in relatively unremarkable circumstances; nevertheless, from a very early age he demonstrated a fiery precociousness that would foreshadow his later exploits. The onset of the French Revolution had led to regional instability, in part due to the ideological conflict of the newly formed republic with the surrounding monarchies.  France eventually ended up at war with much of Europe, in what are known as the French Revolutionary Wars.  When Spain invaded France in 1793, Arago’s childhood home ended up being a transit point for French forces, and young Arago was eager to get involved:

Estagel was a halting-place for a portion of the troops who, coming from the interior, either went on to Perpignan, or repaired direct to the army of the Pyrenees.  My parents’ house was therefore constantly full of officers and soldiers.  This, joined to the lively excitement which the Spanish invasion had produced within me, inspired me with such decided military tastes, that my family was obliged to have me narrowly watched to prevent my joining by stealth the soldiers who left Estagel.  It often happened that they caught me at a league’s distance from the village, already on my way with the troops.

On one occasion these warlike tastes had nearly cost me dear.  It was the night of the battle of Peires-Tortes.  The Spanish troops in their retreat had partly mistaken their road.  I was in the square of the village before daybreak: I saw a brigadier and five troopers come up, who, at the sight of the tree of liberty, called out, “Somos perdidos!” ["We're lost!"] I ran immediately to the house to arm myself with a lance which had been left there by a soldier of the levée en masse, and placing myself in ambush at the corner of a street, I struck with a blow of this weapon the brigadier placed at the head of the party.  The wound was not dangerous: a cut of the sabre, however, was descending to punish my hardihood, when some countrymen came to my aid, and, armed with forks, overturned the five cavaliers from their saddles, and made them prisoners.  I was then seven years old.**

With such an auspicious start, one would think that Arago inevitably became a military man of some sort.  This was not to be the case, but nevertheless conflicts between Spain and France would play a major role in his life, as we will see.

Walking one day on the city ramparts, the Young Arago met an officer of engineers who was overseeing repairs.  Arago was intrigued by the man, and learned that he could pursue a similar career at the Polytechnic School, which could only be entered by passing a difficult mathematical examination.  From that point onward, Arago sought out and studied intently the works of the leading mathematical and physical minds of the day.  When exam time came, he was more than prepared, in spite of the hostility of the examiner:

At last the moment of examination arrived, and I went to Toulouse in company with a candidate who had studied at the public college.  It was the first time that pupils from Perpignan had appeared in the competition.  My intimidated comrade was completely discomfited.  When I repaired after him to the board, a very singular conversation took place between M. Monge (the examiner) and me.

“If you are going to answer like your comrade, it is useless for me to question you.”

“Sir, my comrade knows much more than he has shown; I hope I shall be more fortunate than he; but what you have just said to me might well intimidate me and deprive me of all my powers.”

“Timidity is always the excuse of the ignorant; it is to save you from the shame of a defeat that I make you the proposal of not examining you.”

“I know of no greater shame than that which you now inflict upon me.  Will you be so good as to question me? it is your duty.”

“You carry yourself very high, sir! We shall see presently whether this be a legitimate pride.”

“Proceed, sir; I wait for you.”

Arago not only passed the exam, but mastered it, providing multiple techniques for solving questions put to him.  He ended up being at the top of the list of entering candidates at the Polytechnic at the end of 1803, and excelled at his studies.

The political turmoil of France in that era left nothing untouched, however; even secure in a school of higher learning, Arago would face unexpected peril.  In 1804, Napoleon came to power, and he sent a general to receive an oath of obedience from the students of the Polytechnic.  Most, on hearing their name, defiantly answered “Present!” instead of “I swear it!”; one student, by the name of Brissot, flatly refused to take the oath.  The general ordered the student arrested by his fellow classmates but they, including Arago, refused to lay hands upon him. Brissot was nevertheless expelled the next day.  When he reappeared in Arago’s life, he had a deadly plan in mind:

I had entirely lost sight of him for several months, when he came to pay me a visit at the Observatory, and placed me in the most delicate, the most terrible, position that an honest man ever found himself in.

“I have not seen you,” he said to me, “because since leaving the school I have practised daily firing with a pistol; I have now acquired a skill beyond the common, and I am about to employ it in ridding France of the tyrant who has confiscated all her liberties.  Carrousel, close to the place by which Napoleon, on coming out from the court, will pass to review the cavalry; from the humble window of my apartment will the ball be fired which will go through his head.”

I leave it to be imagined with what despair I received this confidence.  I made every imaginable effort to deter Brissot from his sinister project: I remarked how all those who had rushed on enterprises of this nature had been branded in history by the odious title of assassin.  Nothing succeeded in shaking his fatal resolution; I only obtained from him a promise on his honour that the execution of it should be postponed for a time, and I put myself in quest of means for rendering it abortive.

Contacting the authorities was out of the question, and Brissot’s mother had resigned herself to the inevitability of her son’s martyrdom.

It was from myself that I must henceforth draw all my resources.  I had remarked that Brissot was addicted to the composition of romances and pieces of poetry.  I encouraged this passion, and every Sunday, above all, when I knew that there would be a review, I went to fetch him, and drew him into the country, in the environs of Paris.  I listened then complacently to the reading of those chapters of his romance which he had composed during the week.

The first excursions frightened me a little, for armed with his pistols, Brissot seized every occasion of showing his great skill; and I reflected that this circumstance would lead to my being considered as his accomplice, if he ever carried out his project.  At least, his pretensions to literary fame, which I flattered to the utmost, the hopes (though I had none myself) which I led him to conceive of the success of an attachment of which he had confided the secret to me, made him receive with attention the reflections which I constantly made to him on his enterprise.  He determined on making a journey beyond the seas, and thus relieved me from the most serious anxiety which I have experienced in all my life.

This statement of “most serious anxiety” will seem ironic in light of his later life events!
Though he avoided being involved in an assassination, another unfortunate death would  change the course of Arago’s career.  In 1795, the French government had founded the Bureau des Longitudes, which was tasked with improving nautical navigation, among other things.  One of the founding members, Pierre Méchain, had been sent to Spain to perform measurements of the meridian arc between Barcelona and the island of Formentera — essentially, he was taking precise measurements of the curvature of the Earth.  However, he died there of yellow fever in late 1804.  Méchain’s son, who had been Secretary at the Paris Observatory (also connected with the Bureau), immediately resigned, leaving a job opening.  Arago had sufficiently impressed the noteworthy of the Polytechnic that he was offered the job.  He was hesitant to do so — his heart was still set on training to be a member of the French Artillery — but accepted the position on condition  that he would be able to reenter school if he so desired.

Arago took up work with Jean-Baptiste Biot, a more senior researcher, and the two performed investigations on the optical properties of gases.  While this work was ongoing, they grew interested in continuing the incomplete longitude work of Méchain.  The pair made a proposal to the Bureau, it was accepted, and in 1806 they headed off to Spain to take measurements.

Their work involved measurements from mountaintop to distant mountaintop, with signal lights allowing triangulation between these points.  Arago spent much time wandering in remote mountainous, even lawless, regions of Spain, and in the process narrowly escaped more than one life-or-death scrape.  For instance:

One day, as a recreation, I thought I could go, with a fellow-countryman, to the fair at Murviedro, the ancient Saguntum, which they told me was very curious.  I met in the town the daughter of a Frenchman resident at Valencia, Madlle. B—-.  All the hotels were crowded; Madlle. B—- invited us to take some refreshments at her grandmother’s; we accepted; but on leaving the house she informed us that our visit had not been to the taste of her betrothed, and that we must be prepared for some sort of attack on his part: we went directly to an armourer’s, bought some pistols, and commenced our return to Valencia.

On our way I said to the calezero (driver), a man whom I had employed for a long time, and who was much devoted to me: –

“Isidro, I have some reason to believe that we shall be stopped; I warn you of it, so that you may not be surprised at the shots which will be fired from the caleza (vehicle).”

Isidro, seated on the shaft, according to the custom of the country, answered: –

“Your pistols are completely useless, gentlemen; leave me to act; one cry will be enough; my mule will rid us of two, three, or even four men.”

Scarcely one minute had elapsed after the calezero had uttered these words, when two men presented themselves before the mule and seized her by the nostrils.  At the same instant a formidable cry, which we never be effaced from my remembrance, — the cry of Capitana! — was uttered by Isidro.  The mule reared up almost vertically, raising up one of the men, came down again, and set off at a rapid gallop.  The jolt which the carriage made led us to understand too well what had just occurred.  A long silence succeeded this incident; it was only interrupted by these words of the calezero, “Do you not think, gentleman, that my mule is worth more than any pistols?”

The next day the captain-general, Don Domingo Izquierdo, related to me that a man had been found crushed on the road to Murviedro.  I gave him an account of the prowess of Isidro’s mule, and no more was said.

The mountainous regions were filled with bandits, and a visiting French scientist, laden with equipment, would be a potential target.  A curious twist of fate, and a chance encounter, helped protect Arago immensely from this danger:

During my stay on a mountain near Cullera, to the north of the mouth of the river Xucar, and to the south of the Abluféra, I once conceived the project of establishing a station on the high mountains which are in front of it.  I went to see them.  The alcaid of one of the neighbouring villages warned me of the danger to which I was about to expose myself.  ”These mountains,” said he to me, “form the resort of a band of highway robbers.”  I asked for the national guard, as I had the power to do so.  My escort was supposed by the robbers to be an expedition directed against them, and they dispersed themselves at once over the rich plain which is watered by the Xucar.  On my return I found them engaged in combat with the authorities of Cullera.  Wounds had been given on both sides, and, if I recollect right, one alguazil was left dead on the plain.

The next morning I regained my station.  The following night was a horrible one; the rain fell in a deluge.  Towards night, there was knocking at my cabin door. To the question, “Who is there?” the answer was, “A custom-house guard, who asks of you a shelter for some hours.” My servant having opened the door to him, I saw a magnificent man enter, armed to the teeth.  He laid himself down on the earth, and went to sleep.  In the morning, as I was chatting with him at the door of my cabin, his eyes flashed on seeing two persons on the slope of the mountain, the alcaid of Cullera and his principal alguazil, who were coming to pay me a visit.  ”Sir,” cried he, “nothing less than the gratitude which I owe to you, on account of the service which you have rendered to me this night, could prevent my seizing this occasion for ridding myself, by one shot of this carabine, of my most cruel enemy. Adieu, sir!” And he departed, springing from rock to rock as light as a gazelle.

On reaching the cabin, the alcaid and his alguazil recognised in the fugitive the chief of all the brigands in the country.

Some days afterwards, the weather having again become very bad, I received a second visit from the pretended custom-house guard, who went soundly to sleep in my cabin.  I saw that my servant, an old soldier, who had heard the recital of the deeds and behaviour of this man, was preparing to kill him.  I jumped down from my camp bed, and, seizing my servant by the throat,– “Are you mad?” said I to him; “are we to discharge the duties of police in this country?  Do you not see, moreover, that this would expose us to the resentment of all those who obey the orders of this redoubted chief?  And we should thus render it impossible for us to terminate our operations.”

Next morning, when the sun rose, I had a conversation with my guest, which I will try to reproduce faithfully.

“Your situation is perfectly known to me; I know that you are not a custom-house guard; I have learnt from certain information that you are the chief of the robbers of the country.  Tell me whether I have anything to fear from your confederates?”

“The idea of robbing you did occur to us; but we concluded that all your funds would be in the neighbouring towns; that you would carry no money to the summit of the mountains, where you would not know what to do with it, and that our expedition against you could have no fruitful result.  Moreover, we cannot pretend to be as strong as the King of Spain.  The King’s troops leave us quietly enough to exercise our industry; but on the day that we molested an envoy from the Emperor of the French, they would direct against us several regiments, and we should soon have to succumb.  Allow me to add, that the gratitude which I owe to you is your surest guarantee.”

Some days later, Arago was accosted by bandits on the road; when he identified himself, though, the bandits immediately departed.

There was more than one bandit chief, however, and the protection of one did not extend to the next.  On another occasion, Arago’s contingent ended up fleeing from armed robbers who were definitely planning to do them harm.  While wandering, lost, in the forest late at night, they spotted the light of a nearby cottage and managed to seek shelter from the bandits.  It turns out the family in the cottage were up late making black pudding, having killed a pig earlier in the day.  As Arago notes,

Had the pig lived one day more, or had there been no black puddings, I should certainly have been no longer in this world, and I should not have the opportunity to relate the story of the robbers of Oropeza.

In his encounter with the bandit chief, Arago showed evidence of his future skill as a politician; another opportunity arose when looking for cooperation from the residents near the measurement stations.

In order to succeed in our geodesic operations, to obtain the co-operation of the inhabitants of the villages near our stations, it was desirable for us to be recommended to the priests.  We went, therefore, — M. Lanusse, the French Vice-Consul, M. Biot, and I, — to pay a visit to the Archbishop of Valencia, to solicit his protection.  This archbishop, a man of very tall figure, was then chief of the Franciscans; his costume more than negligent, his grey robe, covered with tobacco, contrasted with the magnificence of the archiepiscopal palace.  He received us with kindness, and promised us all the recommendations we desired; but, at the moment of taking leave of him, the whole affair seemed to be spoiled. M. Lanusse and M. Biot went out of the reception room without kissing the hand of his grace, although he had presented it to each of them very graciously.  The archbishop indemnified himself on my poor person.  A movement, which was very near breaking my teeth, a gesture which I might justly call a blow of the fist, proved to me that the chief of the Franciscans, notwithstanding his vow of humility, had taken offence at the want of ceremony in my fellow visitors.  I was going to complain of the abrupt way in which he had treated me, but I had the necessities of our trigonometrical operations before my eyes, and I was silent.

Besides this, at the instant when the closed fist of the archbishop was applied to my lips, I was still thinking of the beautiful optical experiments which it would have been possible to make with the magnificent stone which ornamented his pastoral ring.  This idea, I must frankly declare, had preoccupied me during the whole of the visit.

The Third of May 1808, by Francisco Goya

There were, in fact, many other fascinating incidents that occurred to or near Arago during this part of his sojourn in Spain.  All of this was, however, somewhat of a “warm-up” to the real adventure, that began in 1808.  In late 1807, Napoleon sent an army into allied Spain’s territory to invade Portugal; by February of 1808 the Emperor decided to turn on his ally and ordered French troops to seize key Spanish fortresses, and turned Spain into an occupied country.  On the second of May 1808, the people of Madrid rose up against the French, resulting in a brutal crackdown on the third of May and triggering the Peninsular War between Spain, the United Kingdom and Portugal against France.

The newly-sparked rage of the Spanish did not bode well for the Frenchman sequestered at the top of a mountain, shining mysterious signal lights.

My station at Majorca, the Clop de Galazo, a very high mountain, was situated exactly over the port where Don Jayme el Conquistador disembarked when he went to deliver the Balearic Islands from the Moors.  The report spread itself through the population that I had established myself there in order to favour the arrival of the French army, and that every evening I made signals to it.  But these reports had nothing menacing until the moment of the arrival at Palma, the 27th of May, 1808, of an ordnance officer from Napoleon.  This officer was M. Berthémie; he carried to the Spanish squadron, at Mahon, the order to go in all haste to Toulon.  A general rising, which placed the life of this officer in danger, followed the news of his mission.  The Captain-General Vivés only saved his life by shutting him up in the strong castle of Belver.  Then they bethought themselves of the Frenchman established on the Clop de Galazo, and formed a popular expedition to go and seize him.

A friendly Spanish boat captain got to Arago first, and managed to bring Arago him down in disguise past the mob.  Arago’s mastery of languages helped him here, because he was able to pass himself off as a Majorcan perfectly.  When he reached the boat that was to bring him to safety in French-occupied Barcelona, however, another mob arrived.

“Do not be uneasy,” said [the captain] to me; “if they should penetrate into the vessel you can hide yourself in this trunk.” I made the attempt; but the chest which he showed me was so small that my legs were entirely outside, and the cover could not be shut down.

Arago had no choice but to request that he be imprisoned in the Castle of Bellver for his own protection.     Getting to the castle was no mean feat in itself, however:

At the moment of their crossing the harbour the populace perceived me, commenced a pursuit, and it was not without much difficulty that I reached Belver safe and sound.  I had only, indeed, received on my way one slight wound from a dagger in the thigh.  Prisoners have often been seen to run with all speed from their dungeon; I am the first, perhaps, to whom it has happened to do the reverse.  This took place on the 1st or 2nd of June, 1808.

Bellver Castle

Arago spent roughly two months in Bellver Castle.  The governor of the castle was kind enough to him, but the rest of the population of the island of Majorca, even former friends, had become decidedly and sometimes lethally hostile.  A Swiss garrison was brought in by the governor to replace the Spanish one, for fear of the prisoners’ safety.  Arago also learned that one of the holy monks in the town below had attempted to convince a Spanish soldier to poison Arago’s dinner!

One of Arago’s remaining friends, a M. Rodriguez, brought news periodicals for him to read during his stay.  It was from one of these articles that Arago read of his own execution:

Another journal contained an article bearing this title: “Relacion de la ahorcadura del señor Arago e del señor Berthemie,” — literally, “Account of the execution of M. Arago and M. Berthémie.” This account spoke of the two executed men in very different terms.  M. Berthemie was a Huguenot; he had been deaf to all exhortations; he had spit in the face of the ecclesiastic who was present, and even on the image of Christ.  As for me, I had conducted myself with much decency, and had allowed myself to be hung without giving rise to any scandal.  The writer also expressed his regret that a young astronomer had been so weak as to associate himself with treason, coming under the disguise of science to assist the entrance of the French army into a friendly kingdom.

Arago was able to read between the lines — with a fictional account of his execution being reported, the real thing was likely not far off.  He decided to make his escape; his friend Rodriguez arranged for sympathetic guards to allow Arago and friends (including M. Berthémie) to leave the castle, and further arranged for a fishing vessel to carry them to the city of Algiers, on the coast of Algeria in Africa.

At Algiers, Arago and colleagues made their way to the French consulate — but not before a brawl on the docks against a Spanish port official that refused to allow them to disembark.  At the consulate, Berthémie and Arago were given false passports and passage was booked for them on a vessel of the Algerian Regency heading to Marseilles.  They departed on the 13th of August, after a press-gang had rounded up enough locals to be sailors on the ship.  Among the cargo on the ship were gifts of lions and monkeys for the Emperor Napoleon, and passengers from both Europe and the Middle East.

On the way, the Regency vessel met up with a weaker American one, and Arago took the opportunity to extort some coffee, tea and sugar from its captain, as the expense of being labelled a pirate by said captain!  With some luxury items acquired, the rest of the trip to Marseilles seemed like it would be a pleasant and comfortable one — until the Regency ship was intercepted by a heavily-armed Spanish corsair.

The Spanish captain seized the Algierian vessel, on the grounds that it was violating a coalition blockade against all ports of France.  They were sailed to Rosas, Spain, and were imprisoned in a dismantled windmill there: in fact, they were only some 60 miles from Arago’s childhood home of Estagel at that point.

The Regency ship was heavily laden with treasure; the Spanish authorities were eager to claim its goods as their own, but needed a reasonable excuse to do so.  They decided that Arago must be the true proprietor of the ship, and furthermore a deserter from the Spanish army; the ship would then be seized as criminal property.  Arago was brought before a judge for interrogation, and undeniably was in a tough bind: he could be revealed as a Spanish deserter (likely sentenced to death) or expose himself as a Frenchman (and probably equally likely to be executed).  He solved the problem in a manner quite remarkable:

They stretched two cords between the mill and the shore, and a judge placed himself in front of me.  As the interrogatories were made from a good distance, the numerous audience which encircled us took a direct part in the questions and answers.  I will endeavour to re-produce this dialogue with all possible fidelity: –

“Who are you?”

“A poor roving merchant.”

“Whence do you come?”

“From a country where you certainly never were.”

“In a word, what country is it?”

I was afraid to answer, for the passports, steeped in vinegar, were in the hands of the judge-instructor, and I had forgotten whether I was from Schwekat or from Leoben.  Finally I answered  at all hazards:–

“I come from Schwekat.”

And this information happily was found to agree with that of the passport.

“You are as much from Schwekat as I am,” answered the judge.  ”You are Spanish, and, moreover, a Spaniard from the kingdom of Valencia, as I perceive by your accent.”

“Would you punish me, sir, because nature has endowed me with the gift of languages? I learn with facility the dialects of those countries through which I pass in the exercise of my trade; I have learnt, for example, the dialect of Iviza.”

“Very well, you shall be taken at your word.  I see here a soldier from Iviza; you shall hold a conversation with him.”

“I consent; I will even sing the goat song.”

Each of the verses of this song (if verses they be) terminates by an imitation of the bleating of the goat.

I commenced at once, with an audacity at which I really feel astonished, to chant this air, which is sung by all the shepherds of the island.

Ah graciada señora
Una canzo bouil canta
Bè Bè Bè Bè

No sera gaira pulida
Nosé si vos agradara
Bè Bè Bè Bè

At once my Ivizacan, upon whom this air had the effect of the ranz des vaches on the Swiss, declared, all in tears, that I was a native of Iviza.

I then said to the judge that if he would put me in communication with a person knowing the French language, he would arrive at just as embarrassing result.  An émigré officer of the Bourbon regiment offered at once to make the experiment, and, after some phrases interchanged between us, affirmed without hesitation that I was French.

The judge, rendered impatient, exclaimed, “Let us put an end to these trials which decide nothing.  I summon you, sir, to tell me who you are.  I promise that your life will be safe if you answer me with sincerity.”

“My greatest wish would be to give an answer to your satisfaction.  I will, then, try to do so; but I warn you that I am not going to tell you the truth.  I am son of the innkeeper at Mataró.” “I know that innkeeper; you are not his son.” “You are right.  I announced to you that I should vary my answers until one of them should suit you.  I retract then, and tell you that I am a titiretero (player of marionettes), and that I practised at Lerida.”

A loud shout of laughter from the multitude encircling us greeted this answer, and put an end to the questions.

“I swear by the d—l,” exclaimed the judge,  ”that I will discover sooner or later who you are!”

And he retired.

As a result of this spectacular scene of defiance, Arago became the de facto representative of the multi-national contingent of prisoners.  He eventually revealed his true identity to the judge, to avoid being labeled as a Spanish deserter, but this revelation did not quite stop the Spanish attempts to claim the ship.

The next day a strong picquet of troops presented itself before the mill.  The maneouvres made by it inspired all of us with anxiety, but especially Captain Krog [a Norwegian captain who was also held captive].  ”What will they do with us?” he exclaimed.  ”Alas! you will see only too soon,” replied the Spanish officer.  This answer made every one believe that they were going to shoot us.  What might have strengthened me in this idea was the obstinacy with which Captain Krog and two other individuals of small size hid themselves behind me. A handling of arms made us think that we had but a few seconds to live.

In analysing the feelings which I experienced on this solemn occasion, I have come to the conclusion that the man who is led to death is not as unhappy as the public imagines him to be.  Fifty ideas presented themselves nearly simultaneously to my mind, and I did not rack my brain for any of them; I only recollect the two following, which have remained engraved on my memory.  On turning my head to the right, I saw the national flag flying on the bastions of Figueras, and I said to myself, “If I were to move a few hundred metres, I should be surrounded by comrades, by friends, by fellow citizens, who would receive me affectionately.  Here, without their being able to impute any crime to me, I am going to suffer death at twenty-two years of age.” But what agitated me more deeply was this: looking towards the Pyrenees, I could distinctly see their peaks, and I reflected that my mother, on the other side of the chain, might at this awful moment be looking peaceably at them.

This mock execution seems to have been one final attempt to get Arago to confess his “true” identity as the owner of the seized vessel; with this failure, the captives were conducted to a prison in town.  Once there, Arago sold his pocket watch to a merchant through the prison window for sixty francs, and with the funds they were able to purchase food from other passing vendors.  Later, after Arago had departed, Rosas would fall to the French, and Arago’s father would encounter a Spanish soldier carrying his son’s watch; this led to Arago’s family believing he was dead for quite some time.

Freedom came unexpectedly.  News of the capture of the Regency vessel had reached the Dey (ruler) of Algiers (via, in fact, a letter written by Arago and smuggled out), and that infuriated ruler threatened war with Spain if the ship was not immediately released.  On the 28th of November, 1808 — after some 3 months imprisonment — the ship set sail again for Marseilles.

At this point, however, Arago’s travel would take on an Odyssean level of absurdity.  When their ship had come in sight of the buildings on hill neighboring the city of Marseilles proper, a mistral wind of great violence fell upon the ship and blew them uncontrollably south again.  They ended up at the Algerian city of Béjaïa on the 5th of December, even further away from their destination than before!

Arago was understandably eager to be on his way again, and the only way to catch a ride back to France would be via the port of Algiers, which he had not long earlier passed through.  The local sailors, however, told him that travel by boat to Algeria would be impossible during the three months of winter.  An odd bit of fate made Arago consider a desperate plan:

One evening I was making these sad reflections while pacing the deck of the vessel, when a shot from a gun on the coast came and struck the side planks close to which I was passing.  This suggested to me the thought of going to Algeria by land.

I went the next day, accompanied by M. Berthémie and Captain Spiro Calligero, to the Caïd of the town: “I wish,” said I to him, “to go to Algiers by land.” The man, quite frightened, exclaimed, “I cannot allow you to do so; you would certainly be killed on the road; your Consul would make a complaint to the Dey, and I should have my head cut off.”

Arago and Berthémie actually wrote a letter absolving the local leader of any responsibility for their deaths in the journey.  They then found a Muslim priest to guide them to Algiers and, with a number of Moorish sailors from their ship, made preparations to depart.  There were a few special companions that Arago needed to make his farewells to before he left, however:

I went, at the last moment, to make my bow to the only lion that was still alive, and with whom I had lived in very good harmony; I wished also to say good-bye to the monkeys, who during nearly five months had been equally my companions to misfortune.  These monkeys during our frightful misery had rendered us a service which I scarcely dare mention, and which will scarcely be guessed by the inhabitants of our cities, who look upon these animals as objects of diversion; they freed us from the vermin which infested us, and showed particularly a remarkable cleverness in seeking out the hideous insects which lodged themselves in our hair.

They at last set off towards Algiers.  Along the way, their numbers grew as a number of the Kabyle people joined, with the purpose of reaching the port city and enlisting as sailors.  The growth of the band was fortunate, for many dangers lurked on the remote journey.  Several nights in forested areas, the troop was stalked by hungry lions, though no attacks ever came.  People formed the worst threat, however: At every village, the priest had to scout ahead to negotiate safe passage for the contingent.  At one point, Arago found himself awakened to cries of local Muslim warriors, who had discovered that the band had Christians among it (Arago and Berthémie) and intended to put them to death.  A Muslim sailor and friend of Arago’s, Mehemet, saved them by some quick thinking: he informed the warriors that the two Christians were on a pilgrimage to Algiers to convert to Islam.  Arago and Berthémie joined in the daily prayers to Mecca, which was apparently sufficient evidence regarding their faith.

The group at last arrived at Algiers on December 25, 1808.  Nobody, even the newly-appointed Dey of the city, could believe that the group had come overland from Béjaïa!  Arago and Berthémie went back to the French consulate that had assisted them months earlier.

They spent several months this time in Algiers, and Arago made many pointed observations of the politics and culture of the region.  At last, on the 21st of June, 1809, Arago ended up on a merchant ship that was part of a convoy heading to Marseilles.

This trip was more successful than his previous attempts to reach his homeland, but was not without troubles.  At one point, the convoy was intercepted by an English frigate, that demanded they report to the Hyères Islands to have their fate decided by an English admiral.  The ships defied the order, and narrowly managed to reach the island of Pomègues, just outside of Marseilles, ahead of the English.

The next morning, 2nd of July, 1809, I disembarked at the lazaretto.

At the present day they go from Algiers to Marseilles in four days: it had taken me eleven months to make the same voyage.  It is true that here and there I had made involuntary sojourns.

My letters sent from the lazaretto at Marseilles were considered by my relatives and friends as certificates of resurrection, they having for a long time past supposed me dead.  A great geometer had even proposed to the Bureau of Longitude no longer to pay my allowance to my authorized representative; which appears the more cruel inasmuch as this representative was my father.

Crueler to Arago was the fact that he had one more imprisonment ahead of him: a “lazaretto” is a quarantine station for maritime travelers.  He seems to have spent at least another month in the lazaretto before he finally was completely free:

Having ended my quarantine, I went at once to Perpignan, to the bosom of my family, where my mother, the most excellent and pious of women, caused numerous masses to be said to celebrate my return, as she had done before to pray for the repose of my soul, when she thought that I had fallen under the daggers of the Spaniards.  But I soon quitted my native town to return to Paris; and I deposited at the Bureau of Longitude and the Academy of Sciences my observations, which I had succeeded in preserving amidst the perils and tribulations of my long campaign.

A few days after my arrival, on the 18th of September, 1809, I was nominated an academician in the place of Lalande.  There were fifty-two voters; I obtained forty-seven voices, M. Poisson four, and M. Nouet one.  I was then twenty-three years of age.

Remarkably, Arago had brought all of his research data with him through all of his troubles and journeys, and that data consisted of, in Arago’s words, “the greatest triangulation which had ever been achieved”.  Though there was some objection because of his age, Arago’s achievements earned his a prestigious spot as a Member of the Institute of France.

One more anecdote of Arago’s is worth sharing, which in a sense brings him somewhat full circle from the start of his story:

The Members of the Institute were always presented to the Emperor after he had confirmed their nominations.  On the appointed day, in company with the presidents, with the secretaries of the four classes, and with the academicians who had special publications to offer to the Chief of the State, they assembled in one of the saloons of the Tuileries.  When the Emperor returned from mass, he held a kind of review of these savans, these artists, these literary men, in green uniform.

I must own that the spectacle which I witnessed on the day of my presentation did not edify me.  I even experienced real displeasure in seeing the anxiety evinced by members of the Institute to be noticed.

“You are very young,” said Napoleon to me on coming near me; and without waiting for a flattering reply, which it would not have been difficult to find, he added, — “What is your name?”  An my neighbour on the right, not leaving me time to answer the simple enough question just addressed to me, hastened to say, –

“His name is Arago.”

“What science do you cultivate?”

My neighbour on the left immediately replied, –

“He cultivates astronomy.”

“What have you done?”

My neighbour on the right, jealous of my left hand neighbour for having encroached on his rights at the second question, now hastened to reply, and said, –

“He has just been measuring the line of the meridian in Spain.”

The Emperor imagining doubtless that he had before him either a dumb man or an imbecile, passed on to another member of the Institute.

At this point, do you get the impression that Arago led an incredibly eventful life?  By this point in his narrative, he was only 23 years old, and had not yet made his most significant scientific discoveries.  Furthermore, this blog post, which may not seem it but is really only a summary, leaves out many other fascinating anecdotes from this period of his life.  The full autobiography of his youth can be read online, and I recommend it: it is at turns amazing, amusing, enlightening, and even touching.

Scientifically, Arago would go on to play a pivotal role in the acceptance of the wave theory of light.  In 1810, only a year after his return to France, he would attempt and fail to measure variations of the speed of light.  This result can be considered the first experimental evidence of the constancy of the speed of light, a fundamental part of Einstein’s special theory of relativity; with the help of Augustin-Jean Fresnel, Arago would be able to interpret this result as a consequence of the wave nature of light.

Arago would return the favor to Fresnel.  In 1818, for a prize competition of the Académie des Sciences, Fresnel proposed that the wave nature of light explained the phenomenon of diffraction.   The physicist Poisson countered that Fresnel’s explanation was absurd, because it predicted that a bright spot of light should exist in the shadow of an opaque disk.    Arago performed the experiment to test this “absurd” hypothesis, and in fact verified it; this discovery led to the wide and final acceptance of the wave nature of light!

There is so much more to say about Arago: his other discoveries, his founding of a famous and influential scientific journal, his later political life.  This review of his turbulent youth, however, I believe is sufficient to put Arago in the running for the title of “the most interesting physicist in the world”!  If you ever encounter someone who says that physicists (or scientists, in general) are boring people, point them in François Arago’s direction!

***************************

* I should note, however, that I really love “The Big Bang Theory” and think the show does a lot to break stereotypes and improve the image of scientists; that, however, is a topic for another post!

** In a hilarious footnote, the editor of Arago’s autobiography comments, “With such precocious heroism it is by no means so clear that the author might not have had a hand in the revolution, from which he endeavours above to exculpate himself.”

662. Jan 04: Jeanne Baret, an 18th century lady botanist who disguised herself as a man to travel!  (h/t @jenlucpiquant)

663. Jan 05: A camera fast enough to watch light move?  The link leads to my own post on the “picosecond camera”, which can record images — with some caveats — as such a rate as to track the motion of a pulse of light!

664. Jan 06: What happens when your brain is split in two — and you survive? With the connection between the left/right halves severed, many bizarre “split personality” behaviors have been observed. (h/t @jenlucpiquant)

665. Jan 07: So, what is a “temporal cloak“, anyway? Another of my posts, on the recent announcement of a cloak that can hide an event in time!  Again, not quite as shocking as it initially sounds, but quite remarkable research.

666. Jan 08: Sharks contain urea (normally a component of urine) in their body tissue.  Many species of fish are constantly losing water to the salt-rich seawater surrounding them, and much replenish it.  Sharks, however, use urea to help keep the ion balance in their body comparable to that of the sea.  (h/t @whysharksmatter)

667. Jan 09: The pearl fish makes its home in the anus of sea cucumbers. O_o  (h/t @edyong209)

667a. Bonus fact!  On December 6th, 1916, a German military vessel sunk a set of dinosaurs. (h/t @Laelaps)

668. Jan 10: The scientific lecture that included full-frontal male nudity!  Even worse, the lecturer waggled his exposed erect penis as he waded into the audience… for science! (h/t @miriamgoldste)

I finished this story just this evening, having started it back in May of 2011.

Convergence

The story I am telling happened about three years ago. There isn’t any particular reason to tell it now, other than the hope that, by finally writing it down, I might remember some crucial detail, some neglected observation, which would finally make sense of things. If I could find some sort of explanation for the events, maybe I could stop thinking about them after all this time.

Fifteen years ago, right after my mother died, my father started The Isle of Crete diner. It was a way for both of us to change, and to keep us too busy to think about our loss. He rented a property downtown – not a nice neighborhood, but cheap and busy with businesspeople during the work week. I was too young to work the register then, having just turned ten, but I would bring people’s food to their tables and refill their water glasses, and apply all my girlish charm to keep them entertained and coming back for another visit. Customers order and pay at the register, take a seat, and everything is brought to them. The food is a standard collection of Greek dishes, along with some nontraditional recipes originally concocted by my mother.

Five years ago my father passed away unexpectedly. It was a heart attack brought about by a congenital defect, they said, but I would say that his heart was stronger than anyone’s I know, at least in spirit.

His death left the restaurant without a manager. There were other cooks and other servers, but I was the inheritor of the business, and by that time I had done every role – cook, server, cashier, cleaner. I had been planning to get a late start in college before my father died, but put it off to keep things running. My father started the business to forget about mother’s death, and I continued it to forget about his. I took over The Isle of Crete and never looked back.

I can’t remember for certain now, but I think the man – the regular – started eating at the restaurant only a few weeks after I became manager. Every restaurant has regular customers, and The Isle of Crete had plenty before this one. At first glance, there didn’t seem to be anything particularly different about him. He was of average height, average build; he was the sort of man you wouldn’t glance at twice if you passed him on the street. I can’t really remember what clothes he wore, even though I saw him many, many times. The only unusual feature I noticed was a faint, elongated scar that ran vertically from just above his right eye to the point where his hair was receding.

He came in the evening, shortly before closing. As I said, the neighborhood is not a great one, and though I hadn’t had a problem up to that point I didn’t want to press my luck: I usually shut down by eight o’clock. Not many people came for the dinner hour, and I was the only person in the Isle when he arrived.

He had a book with him, as he would most visits. I didn’t see what he was reading on that first dinner.

He came to the counter and ordered the Greek steak, one of my mother’s old recipes, which was more or less just a seasoned sirloin steak, and not particularly Greek at all. I brought the steak and the silverware to his table, near the front of the diner, and went to clean up the kitchen in preparation for closing.

“Excuse me,” he called me back, and I turned. “Do you have a bigger knife?”

He was sitting at the table, holding his steak knife up delicately in his right hand.

“I prefer to cut my steak with a blade with a little more heft,” he said sheepishly.

You should understand that, though our steaks are not exactly the most tender meat, they’re also not very thick. Our table knives aren’t particularly sharp, but they get the job done. The customer’s request was strange, but anyone who runs a restaurant gets strange requests. I went into the back and picked out a larger knife from one of our older sets of cutlery. The man accepted it without complaint, but as I turned to walk away he called me back again.

“Do you have just a little bigger knife?” he asked, even more sheepish. He was holding the new knife between finger and thumb blade down, like something contaminated. I took it from him and went back into the kitchen.

I have to admit I was somewhat worried at that point. I tried not to think about it, though, and grabbed a heavy solid metal butcher knife that had been around since my Dad started the restaurant; I don’t think it had ever been used. I quickly cleaned it off and brought it out to the man, who took it approvingly.

“Yes, that will do,” he said, tapping his index finger lightly on the tip of the blade. I hurried back to the kitchen and continued cleaning up, watching him with one eye the whole time. Nothing else unusual happened, though. He opened his book on the table and read while he carved into his steak with relish.

Though I had my worries, nothing else happened. He finished his meal, collected his book and left without another word. With some relief I hurried over and locked the door behind him, and switched off the “open” sign.

He became a regular; in fact, he became “the regular”. That is how I thought of him, if I happened to think of him much at all. He came in twice a week, almost without fail, usually once during the week and once on the weekend. He always came in during the last half-hour of business. He always ordered the same thing. He always asked for the heavy knife.
Things went on like that for nearly two years. At first, I was a little guarded around him, always watchful, but eventually I just stopped paying attention. I had my routine, and he had his. He would hunker down behind the pages of a thick book while waiting for his food, and for some time after eating. I only once managed to see what he was reading: it was some sort of aging anatomy textbook, with yellowing pages and color illustrations of blood-red musculature.

I assumed he was a doctor. Now I’m sure he wasn’t.

One evening, just before closing as always, he arrived in a particularly chipper mood. He had a spring in his step and a particularly heavy and thick book under his arm.
Noting his mood, I asked how he was doing.

“Grrreat,” he said with a smile, slapping his book down on the counter. I smiled back, awkwardly, and took his order as usual. When I brought him his food and knife, he already had the book propped open like a screen and had his head buried in it, completely hidden.
I went back to the kitchen and began cleaning up for closing. I was startled to hear the bell on the door ring again, and almost jumped at the sound of it.

Two men had come in, one tall and one short. They were not businessmen, or any of the local crowd, and were dressed for the street. My heart sank instinctively at the sight of them; they did not look hungry in the least. They both advanced directly towards the counter, the short one in the lead. He was wearing a backwards baseball cap that he didn’t bother to take off. The tall one lingered, glancing back towards the regular, whose face was still buried in his book.

“Can I help you?” I began, and then the short man had pulled a revolver from his jacket and pointed it at me. The shiny silver metal reflected the ceiling lights and nearly blinded me; nevertheless, I could see down the darkness of the short barrel.

“The register, empty it!” the short man yelled at me, waving the gun dangerously in my face. My hands had gone up instinctively, and now I struggled to get them down to the register.

“Now, bitch, now!” short man shouted, so close to my face that I could smell his breath. He glanced back towards his accomplice the tall man, who had turned to the regular. He pointed a gun at my customer, who still had not lifted his head out from beyond his massive book.

“Get your hands up, motherfucker!” the tall man said, reaching out his free hand and slamming the book down, exposing the regular’s face.

This is where I can’t be sure of exactly what I saw, or how it happened.

The tall man took a look at the regular, really looked him in the eyes, and seemed to falter. His gun hand lowered noticeably. In that moment of hesitation, the regular had leapt to his feet, bringing the butcher knife up and into the tall man’s stomach. In an instant, he had disemboweled the man.

Tall man’s gun fired harmlessly into the air, the bullet blasting a hole in the floor. Tall man himself sagged to the floor, making a gurgling noise as he went.

Short man whirled at the sound of the shot, his gun trailing the path of his eyes. It settled on the head of the regular, and he pulled the trigger. At the same time, the regular snapped his head back and to the right, drawing his knife arm back to accentuate the movement. The bullet from tall man’s gun grazed the regular’s forehead, and where the regular formerly had a pale vertical scar he now had a bloody gash.

The regular brought his knife arm forward again, and hurled the knife with terrible force. It struck the wrist of the short man’s gun hand, slamming it back against the wall behind him and pinning it there. The gun fired once again, into the ceiling, and then it had clattered harmlessly onto the floor.

The short man was cursing, clutching at the knife embedded through his wrist into the wall. The regular picked up his napkin, dabbed his bleeding forehead once, absentmindedly, and then walked over to the trapped robber.

Only when the regular was right in front of him did the short man notice him again.

“You,” he said in a hollow voice.

The regular gripped the knife handle, pulled it roughly from the wall. The short man fell to the ground with a squeal. The regular grabbed the man’s wounded hand, turned, and began to drag him towards the door.

The short man didn’t struggle. His eyes were open, looking in my direction, but out of focus. I have never seen such a look of utter hopelessness, even soullessness, on a person’s face before; it haunts me to this day.

When the regular reached the table at which he had been eating, he put down the knife, and picked up his book. He continued to the door, dragging the short man behind him. Just as he was putting his hand on the door handle, he turned back towards me.

“Thanks for the food,” he said, smiling; there was no emotion at all in his expression.

And then they passed outside.

The front of the restaurant is mostly windows, including the glass door. However, the lights inside the Isle are brighter than the faint streetlights outside, so things outside become indistinct dark ghosts. I could still see what I thought was the regular, standing over the short man. He seemed to bend over towards the prostrate figure, impossibly bending at the waist without leaning backwards, and his form seemed in the shadows to stretch and bloat, engulfing the outline of the short man. Then my eyes lost the outlines of the two figures, and everything outside looked like a dismal dream.

I stood there, behind the restaurant counter, just as I had been when the short man had pulled his gun, for some time. It was only when I heard the final rattling breath of the tall man crumpled on the floor that I moved to call the police.

I was interrogated intensely when they arrived at the restaurant. Outside, there was no sign of the regular or the short man, but inside I had the corpse of the tall man lying in a pool of blood and his own entrails. Detectives asked me repeatedly about the details of the evening, and had many questions about the regular. It was only then that I realized that I had never even learned the man’s first name in the two years he had eaten at the Isle.

The investigators were particularly skeptical about the regular’s knife throw. They told me, again and again, that it wasn’t possible for a person to throw a knife of that type with enough force to go through a man’s hand and the heavy wall behind it. But the hole was there, on the wall, with a ring of blood around it, and they couldn’t argue with that.

At some point, a uniformed officer came in to give the detective some news. I wasn’t supposed to be able to hear it, but I figured out that the ATM across the street had surveillance camera footage that encompassed the front of the Isle. I was left under supervision while the detectives went to watch the footage.

When they returned, they looked sick. With more intensity, they asked me again about the regular, about the short man, about everything that had happened that evening and every evening that the regular had come into my restaurant. I had nothing new to tell them, so eventually I was taken home.

That is more or less the end of the story. The incident was written up in the newspaper two days later as a “robbery gone wrong”, in which “the robbers had argued, leaving one dead”. The news tried to reach me for a statement, but I stayed home and didn’t answer the phone. Eventually the calls stopped. I got the Isle of Crete cleaned up, and repainted, and reopened two weeks later.

I haven’t seen or heard anything of the regular, or the short man, again. I happened to run into one of the detectives who covered the case a few months later, but he had no new information to report; in fact, he looked haunted when he remembered who I was.

The more I think of that day, the less sense it makes to me. I was hoping that writing it down would help, but it hasn’t. I can still see the regular admiring the shining butcher knife for the first time, the short man waving the shining gun barrel before my eyes, and the empty grin the regular gave me when he departed.

I don’t go out much, anymore. I can’t help feeling that, at some restaurant or grocery store or park or movie theater, there’s someone who is there.

Waiting for me.

************************

My personal theory about writing truly unsettling horror fiction is that it involves giving a story to the reader that seems like it should have an explanation, but which fails to give enough information to conclusively solve the puzzle.  The reader is left struggling to understand the clues that have been given, to fit the tale into their worldview.  Just like in real life, however, some questions simply don’t have answers.  This story is my experiment in building this sort of mystery.

The story is actually inspired by a Greek restaurant that I’m a regular at, and the worker who is usually there when I go in.  I’m usually there by myself, reading a book on some esoteric subject.  I started to wonder what the worker makes of my peculiar demeanor when I stop by; that led to the story you’ve just read.

Inevitably, though, many of these discoveries get misinterpreted in popular news accounts to the point that their real significance is lost in a haze of science fictional, or even supernatural, hype.  A good example of this is the “picosecond camera” that I described last week, which is an amazing achievement but also possesses a number of technical limitations that make it not quite a “camera” in the ordinary sense of the word.

This week, the experimental realization* of a “space-time cloak” or “temporal cloak” by researchers at Cornell University has made national news.  This novel device differs from the “invisibility cloaks” discussed previously on this blog in that it hides temporal events, not spatial objects.  Loosely speaking, this has also been referred to as a “history editor”.  Naturally, the discussion of “cloaking” has again brought out references to “Harry Potter cloaks” and other dramatic imagery; the reality is much more mundane, but still fascinating — and an amazing achievement.  Let’s take a look at what was done, what was not done — and why it’s quite cool!

First, let’s get rid of some misconceptions that the terminology naturally brings to mind.  The terms “space-time cloak” and “history editor” make it sound like the device is ripping a hole in the fabric of space-time itself — like a time machine equipped with a big eraser!  This is definitely not what is happening here!  There is no manipulation of time itself, but rather a manipulation of a beam of light to hide something that the light would otherwise detect.

It is difficult to come up with a simple analogy to explain what is really going on, but let us imagine a beam of light as a long moving train of hanging curtains, as illustrated below:

We might imagine that these curtains are at an assembly line and have recently been dyed, and are still wet (I told you, analogies for this phenomenon are tough!).  We want to pass objects from one side of the curtains to another, but any attempt to simply push an object between them will mess up the dye and leave a mark.  An elegant solution is to design a system that parts the curtains gently starting at one point of their motion and lowers them gently to their original position at another point:

Anything that happens in the gap in the curtains will not affect the curtains at all; these actions are “hidden” from anyone watching the curtains at the end of the line.

This is, in short, the basic idea of a “temporal cloak”: we take a continuous beam of light, and part it like a curtain at one point, leaving a moving gap within which things can happen which will be completely untouched by the beam of light.  Some distance down the line, we close the gap, so that the light beam which reaches the detector is a continuous, undisturbed beam.  To appreciate how weird this is: we could pass a completely opaque object through the beamline during the gap, and the output light beam will still be a perfectly continuous unbroken stream of light!

You may deduce from this description that the real accomplishment isn’t the creating of a gap in the beam of light, but the seamless closing of that gap; or, to put it another way, creating a gap in such a manner that it can be closed seamlessly.

So that is the idea of a “temporal cloak”; the next natural question to ask is: how is it done?  The key to the phenomenon is a clever application of optical dispersion, which is most clearly manifested on the cover of a classic Pink Floyd album cover (and, come to think of it, in the header of this blog):

The atoms of a material respond differently to light of different frequencies (colors); the result of this is that different colors of light move at different speeds in a material.  This is what is known as dispersion, and this difference of speeds results in different colors of light being refracted at different angles in a prism.

The trick in creating a “temporal cloak” is to take light of a given color, and at the point at which one wants to introduce the “gap”, increase the frequency of light (“blue-shift”) in a region on one side, and decrease the frequency of light (“red-shift”) on the other side.  The device used to do this is called a “split-time lens”; more on this in a moment!  Then the light is passed into an optical fiber with dispersion such that the blue-shifted light moves faster and the red-shifted light moves slower.  This causes the gap to open up in the beam of light.  To close the gap, the light is then passed into a fiber with dispersion such that the red-shifted light moves faster and the blue-shifted light slower.  If the dispersion and the length of the fiber is just right, the gap can be seamlessly closed, leaving no trace of the former existence of the gap!  This process is illustrated schematically below:

A schematic of the actual experimental setup looks not much different from the simple description given above (adapted from the experimental paper):

A laser of a fixed frequency passes through a “split-time lens” which creates the red-shifted and blue-shifted section of the beam.  When this section passes into the optical fiber, ordinary dispersion causes the blue parts to speed up and the red parts to slow down, introducing the gap.  In the event region, an optical event is triggered that would ordinarily effect the beam but which falls in the gap and is therefore “cloaked”.  Then the light enters the dispersion-compensating fiber, which has the opposite dispersion properties of the ordinary fiber — the blue parts move slower and the red parts move faster!  This causes the gap to close, but the beam still has red-shifted and blue-shifted segments.  The second split-time lens reverses the effect of the first and removes the frequency shifts, returning the beam to its original, pristine, state.

If you’re paying careful attention (or are just suspicious of my explanation), you may have noticed a flaw in this scheme, as described.  If I blue-shift one part of the wave uniformly and red-shift the other part uniformly, I would expect the blue part to run into the unshifted part of the wave ahead of it, and the red part to get run into by the unshifted part behind it!  A gap will open, but because the parts of the wave are running into one another, I wouldn’t be able to separate them again.

My picture was in fact a little too simple: the frequency of the light in the red- and blue-shifted regions isn’t changed uniformly, but is in fact “chirped”: the frequency is increased/decreased smoothly and continuously.  (The name “chirp” comes from a bird’s “tweet”, which starts at a low frequency and ends with a high frequency: say “tuh-weet!”)  A plot of a chirped signal, which starts with a low frequency and ends with a higher frequency is illustrated below (source):

This means that the red- and blue-shifted regions of the light contain a range of speeds, with the fastest speeds at the middle of the gap and the slowest speeds on the outside boundary.  The gap therefore opens very much like curtains: the middle of the curtain spreads apart the fastest, and bunches up against the slower-moving outer parts.  I should revise my picture to the more sophisticated one shown below:

With the question of “how” out of the way, now we can focus on some more details, such as,  ”How big of a temporal gap was created?”  Don’t start planning your temporally-cloaked bank robbery just yet: the gap width was 50 picoseconds of time, or 50 trillionths of a second!  The event cloaked was a very short nonlinear interaction of light in the “cloaked” region.  With the cloak off, the interaction generated new frequencies in the beam of light, detectable at the output.  With the cloak on, the nonlinear interaction occurred during the short duration of the gap, and produced no noticeable change in the probe beam.

This sort of “temporal cloaking” seems at first glance to be very different from the “spatial cloaking” that has been discussed and investigated for a number of years now.  It is worth noting, however, that the temporal cloak is in fact an almost straightforward extension of the same theoretical ideas that led to the first “invisibility cloaks”.

Physically, the now-traditional form of an invisibility cloak is a device fashioned of material whose optical properties guide light rays around a central “cloaked” region and send them on their way without any deviation (from one of the original 2006 papers**):

It has been noted that, mathematically, the effect of matter on light is equivalent to a distortion of space!  This has led to an entirely new theoretical field of optics, known as transformation optics, in which novel optical devices can be imagined by first assessing the “warping” of space needed, and then determining the material properties that will create this warping.  For instance, an invisibility cloak may be loosely thought of as a stretching of space away from a central, cloaked region, as depicted below.

In early 2011, researchers at Imperial College and the University of Salford realized*** that a medium which has properties which vary in time could produce a similar effective “warping”, but a warping of “space-time”.  We can even use the same warping picture depicted above, but replacing the horizontal position “x” with time:

The picture looks the same, but represents something very different!  Now this is a picture showing the motion of light rays along the y-direction at time t increases; a vertical line represents the position of the light rays at a single instant of time.  When the space-time cloak is active, the rays on the bottom move slower (y increases more slowly as t increases) while rays on the top move faster (y increases faster as t increases).  The “hole” in the middle of the picture represents the gap produced by the space-time cloak.  After a certain period of time, the rays return to their original trajectories and look as if nothing at all happened to them in the interim.

I imagine descriptions like this add to confusion about what exactly a “temporal cloak” is!  People read the phrase “mathematically equivalent to a warp in space-time” and retain, “a warp in space-time”.  As we have noted, though, this temporal cloak is in fact just a clever manipulation of various parts of a continuous stream of light.

It is worth noting that the duration of a cloaked event has a hard limit equal to the amount of time it takes light to pass through the system.  If light takes, say, 20 nanoseconds (20 billionths of a second) to pass through the entire cloaking system, then the theoretical upper limit on the duration would be 20 nanoseconds.  Temporally cloaking an everyday event, even one that lasts a few seconds, seems to be well outside of the reach of such a system, at least as currently conceived.

This does not mean that the temporal cloak doesn’t have potential applications, though.  The authors of the experimental paper suggest that such techniques could be used in optical data processing, for instance in a fiber optics data network.  Being able to split streams of optical data and reconnect them, possibly in a different order, could be a valuable tool in data manipulation.  I imagine such temporal cloaks working much like a railroad switchyard, in which trains of cargo can be separated, moved about, and recombined to send them on to their desired locations.

It will be interesting to see what other ideas and applications related to cloaking people come up with in the future; the temporal cloak shows that the imaginations of physicists in this regard have by no means been exhausted!

***************************

* Fridman, M., Farsi, A., Okawachi, Y., & Gaeta, A. (2012). Demonstration of temporal cloaking Nature, 481 (7379), 62-65 DOI: 10.1038/nature10695

** The original cloaking papers are U. Leonhardt, “Optical conformal mapping,” Science 312 (2006), 1777-1780, and J.B. Pendry, D. Schurig and D.R. Smith, “Controlling electromagnetic fields,” Science 312 (2006), 1780-1782.

*** M.W. McCall, A. Favaro, P. Kinsler and A. Boardman, “A spacetime cloak, or a history editor,” J. Opt. 13 (2011), 024003.

655. Dec 28: Beware the “ball-cutter fish“!  What’s the worst interpretation of the term “ball-cutter fish” you can imagine?  Yep, that’s what it is! (via @kzelnio & @deepseanews)

656. Dec 29: The 1903 discovery of safety glass was literally an accident. 

657. Dec 30: In the early 1900s, “glow-in-the-dark” radium condoms were actually sold!  The discovery of radioactivity, particularly radium, led people to suggest it as essentially a “miracle substance”, with pretty much every use imaginable.  I’ve noted in these facts before chemist Frederick Soddy’s suggestion to inhale radium as a cure for tuberculosis; putting radium on one’s junk adds a whole new cringe-factor, however.  (h/t @highlyanne)

658. Dec 31: Samoa just lost a day by moving date line around itself!  A nice New Year’s fact!  The choice of the location of the date line has always been a convention; due to increased trade with places like Australia that lay across the date line, Samoa found it convenient to move it to be more in sync with its trading partners. (h/t @chrislindsay9)

659. Jan 01: The Catatumbo River lightning: 40k flashes of lightning per night! I  had chronicled in a previous fact that Kifuka, Africa is apparently the world record holder in lightning intensity, with 158 strikes per square km per year!  Why is Catatumbo not listed at the top?  My guess is that the linked article is in error in referring to 40k “strikes” per night, and that all the lightning is cloud-based.  Nevertheless, the intensity is so bright that it serves as a natural lighthouse!  (h/t @jenlucpiquant)

660. Jan 02: How a cone snail catches and kills its fish!  (h/t @ericmjohnson)

661. Jan 03: c. 1805, physicist Francois Arago talked a friend out of trying (and likely succeeding) to assassinate Napoleon!  This comes  from Arago’s autobiography, which is so wild that I’m going to have to blog about it in the near future!  This incident occurred when Arago was still in school; Napoleon demanded a “loyalty oath” from the students, and many of those who refused were drummed out of school.  One of Arago’s friends who was expelled later confided to Arago that he planned to assassinate Napoleon, had trained extensively as a marksman and had picked an ambush point along the Emperor’s parade route! Arago managed to delay his friend’s plans and later convinced him to pursue other activities.