All posts tagged: century

Paranormal investigator captures ‘ghost’ at 13th century Knight’s Templar tower

Paranormal investigator captures ‘ghost’ at 13th century Knight’s Templar tower

Published by Sam Flores

A paranormal investigator believes he captured the ghost of a Knights Templar during a visit to a medieval tower once used by the legendary warrior monks.Mark Vernon, 60, says he heard unexplained voices and dragging noises inside the ruins of Temple Bruer in Lincolnshire, UK, before later spotting a mysterious figure in his footage.The veteran ghost hunter described the site as one of the most haunted places he has visited in 40 years and believes the apparition could be linked to the Knights Templar who once occupied the historic site. Source link

Gaudí’s Legacy Celebrated by Papal Visit a Century After His Humble Death

Gaudí’s Legacy Celebrated by Papal Visit a Century After His Humble Death

Published by Sam Flores

BARCELONA, June 8 (Reuters) – When Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí ⁠was ⁠fatally struck by a tram in ⁠Barcelona in 1926, he did not receive immediate medical attention as onlookers initially thought ​he was a vagabond.  At the time, he was sleeping in a modest room in the grounds of the Sagrada Familia basilica ‌which was under construction. Throughout his ‌career, some of his distinctive, undulating and colourful buildings were harshly mocked in the local press. This week, however, 100 ⁠years on from ⁠Gaudí’s death, Pope Leo XIV will visit Barcelona and his most famous creation, ​the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family), on Wednesday to inaugurate its 172.5-metre Tower of Jesus Christ.  The structure’s completion makes the Sagrada Familia the world’s tallest church. Gaudí’s legacy draws millions of visitors to Barcelona each year and seven of his works are UNESCO heritage sites. The ​main Gaudí buildings in Barcelona generate annual revenues of around 240 million euros ($276 million) combined thanks to ticketing, ⁠according ⁠to local newspaper La Vanguardia. Pope Leo’s ⁠visit, the third ​by a pope, comes a …

The maths meme that has been distracting mathematicians for a century

The maths meme that has been distracting mathematicians for a century

Published by skeptic

A tree-like form arises out of numerical connections in a famous maths puzzle known as the Collatz conjecture Marzio De Biasi/Algoritmarte Almost a century ago, a mathematician came up with a puzzle that was so seemingly simple and yet so fiendishly difficult that it has been distracting other mathematicians ever since. It has become a meme that jumps from brain to brain, with many people claiming to have solved it, only to have their hopes dashed as the proof unravels. And be warned – once I explain the rules, you will immediately want to start playing around with it yourself, and I take no responsibility for how much of your time you waste. It starts a bit like a magic trick. Pick a number, any number – well, at least any positive whole number; don’t try to get clever with something like pi. If it is an even number, divide it by 2. If it is an odd number, multiply it by 3 and add 1. Next, apply the same rules to the resulting number. …

YA Books Among The Best of the Century So Far

YA Books Among The Best of the Century So Far

Published by Jenni Sidey

Next week, we’ll officially reveal our list of the best young adult books of the century so far. It’s a really wonderful, well-rounded, and inclusive list. But like any list of the “best of,” it will not include everyone’s favorite book. Many beloved authors and titles will not be on the list, and it’s not because they don’t hold up. It’s because a list is a list and has certain confines and constraints to it. We’ve taken “best” to mean both best in the sense that it’s quite enduring literature, as well as influential to the development of the category or genre. The list will officially roll out on Wednesday to our website and it will land here in the newsletter on Friday. The great news is that because YA is a category and not a genre, there have been YA books aplenty on the entries in our “Best Books of the Century So Far” lists. Each of those lists has had at least one YA title and in most cases, more than one YA …

Under Notre Dame cathedral, a ‘dig of the century’ unearths 1,700 years of history

Under Notre Dame cathedral, a ‘dig of the century’ unearths 1,700 years of history

Published by Sam Flores

PARIS (AP) — Wilting in the summer sun, a line of tourists waits to climb Notre Dame cathedral and meet its gargoyles. Four meters (13 feet) beneath them, a team of archaeologists is digging the other way — straight down and back in time, to Roman Paris 2,000 years ago. In 2019, fire brought Notre Dame’s spire crashing down as the world watched. The cathedral was rebuilt and reopened in late 2024, and now Paris wants to soften the hot, bare square in front of it with trees and shade. But in a city this old, the soil cannot be turned until what lies beneath it is excavated, in case it is damaged during works. So a slice of Notre Dame’s forecourt has become an excavation site — an open pit ringed by barriers and crossed by a wooden walkway, a few steps from the line-up. A modern Da Vinci Code French media have dubbed it the “dig of the century.” “It’s a rare opportunity for us to work on something that’s tangibly going to …

The 14th Century Philosopher That Challenged the Power of the Pope

The 14th Century Philosopher That Challenged the Power of the Pope

Published by Sam Flores

Published: May 30, 2026written by Simon Lea, PhD Philosophy Summary Marsilius argued the Church’s claim to earthly power was harmful to peace and societal tranquility. He believed the state alone should hold coercive power to enforce laws and maintain order. His revolutionary idea of separating Church and State is a foundational concept for modern democracy. Marsilius argued earthly laws are human-made and therefore can be fallible or “bad” laws. Show more   Marsilius of Padua was one of the most innovative political thinkers of the Middle Ages. His thinking is seen by many today as a precursor to modern democracy. Marsilius’ views of human nature, the rule of law, and the separation of the Church and State are commonplace today but revolutionary in his time. In his great work Defender of the Peace, Marsilius argues that not only should the Church not have political power, but that its claim of authority over earthly matters was actually harmful to peace and tranquility.   Who Was Marsilius of Padua? Miniature on the first page of a luxury manuscript of the Defensor pacis by an …

Millions of Bees Have Thrived Under a New York Cemetery for More Than a Century

Millions of Bees Have Thrived Under a New York Cemetery for More Than a Century

Published by skeptic

A morning walk through East Lawn Cemetery in Ithaca, New York, uncovered an immense colony of some 5.5 million subterranean bees. The discovery, which a Cornell University research team published in April in the journal Apidologie, documents one of the largest aggregations of these insects ever recorded. The population, belonging to the species Andrena regularis, occupies an area of about 1.25 acres and is crucial for pollination of the region’s orchards, demonstrating that historic cemeteries can prove unsuspected refuges for urban biodiversity. The Genesis of the Discovery In the spring of 2022, Rachel Fordyce, then a laboratory technician in Cornell University’s entomology department, noticed an anomalous presence of insects during her usual walk to work. After collecting some specimens, she showed them to Bryan Danforth, an entomologist at the same university. Analysis revealed that they were Andrena regularis, commonly called the mining or miner bee. Unlike honey bees, this wild species has a solitary lifestyle and nests by digging tunnels in the ground. Historical records indicate that the insect has been present in the cemetery, …

Celebrating a century of the magician of jazz, Miles Davis – arts24

Celebrating a century of the magician of jazz, Miles Davis – arts24

Published by Sam Flores

One hundred years after the late Miles Davis was born, the revolutionary trumpet player remains one of the 20th century’s most influential artists. We look back at the life and legacy of a complex, visionary figure with one of his collaborators, musician Jason Miles, who recorded the albums “Tutu”, “Music for Siesta” and “Amandla” with Davis during his later years. Jason’s latest record “100 Miles for Miles Davis” is a reflection on those recording sessions. We also discuss the keyboard and synth arrangements that pushed Davis’s sounds towards the 21st century, and revisit the key moments in his musical journey, from the groundbreaking “Kind of Blue” to his work on French film “Elevator to the Gallows”. Source link

CERN to lead particle physics throughout the 21st century

CERN to lead particle physics throughout the 21st century

Published by Jenni Sidey

In physics, no matter how much theorizing we do — or how precise our calculations and predictions become — there’s one overarching factor that determines whether we make progress or not: the amount and quality of relevant data, experimentally and/or observationally, that we acquire. Theoretically, our Standard Model of reality includes quantum field theory for electromagnetism and the nuclear forces, plus general relativity for gravity as our laws, with the Standard Model of particles plus dark matter and dark energy representing the energy content of our Universe. This is supported by an enormous suite of experimental and observational evidence, but it cannot represent all that’s out there in the Universe. Theoretically, there are an enormous number of puzzles that remain unsolved within our standard picture. They include: the nature of dark matter and dark energy, the absence of CP-violation in the strong interactions, the insufficient amount of weak CP-violation to explain the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry, the nature (and details) of the electroweak phase transition, the existence (or non-existence) of new particles at the electroweak scale, …

This young startup is taking on a fragrance industry that hasn’t changed in a almost half century

This young startup is taking on a fragrance industry that hasn’t changed in a almost half century

Published by skeptic

Fragrance tech company Patina says it has raised $2 million in funding investors, including Betaworks and True Ventures.  The company focuses on creating new scent molecules using advanced molecular design, machine learning, and scent research. Today, most of the scent molecules used in consumer products are created by a small number of specialized labs, which then sell those molecules to fragrance houses or cosmetics companies — the brands that ultimately turn them into perfumes, candles, or flavored products. Patina is trying to shake that up, entering an area that has seen little innovation in the past half century. The company was founded by Sean Raspet and Laura Sisson. Raspet is an artist and perfumer who, over time, developed an obsession with human senses and began creating new scent and flavor molecules as a creative pursuit. Sisson, meanwhile, came from a background in food and software engineering, and became obsessed with human senses after discovering an entire scientific field dedicated to modeling them. The two met, naturally, at a scent art gallery in New York in …