All posts tagged: oldest

Tell us about your oldest household appliances | Life and style

Tell us about your oldest household appliances | Life and style

Published by Sam Flores

An elderly couple in Gloucestershire are reportedly still using what is believed to be Britain’s oldest working fridge. The Electrolux appliance was built in the 1930s and bought second-hand by their family in 1949, with the owners telling SWNS that it is “still going strong”. We would love to hear about your oldest appliances. Do you have a washing machine, oven or vacuum that you are still using after many years? We would love to hear about your workhorse appliances, why they’re so impressive and how long you’ve had them. Share your experience You can tell us about your oldest appliance using this form. Your responses, which can be anonymous, are secure as the form is encrypted and only the Guardian has access to your contributions. We will only use the data you provide us for the purpose of the feature and we will delete any personal data when we no longer require it for this purpose. For alternative ways to get in touch securely please see our tips guide. Tell us about your oldest …

Our Oldest Ally – The Atlantic

Our Oldest Ally – The Atlantic

Published by Sam Flores

There is no easier city in the world for an American to love than Paris. So it has been since the time of Benjamin Franklin. Love, though, comes with spats and fits of temper, ruptures and reconciliations. So, too, with the United States and France. A recent visit reminded me, however, of why the American relationship with France remains, whatever its difficulties, one to cherish. Take the ways in which Britain and France deal with the Second World War. The British are busily removing Winston Churchill from their banknotes, replacing him with an engraving of a hedgehog. Meanwhile, the French are flocking to see a two-part, five-hour-long movie, La Bataille de Gaulle, which retells the story—both anguished and heroic—of defeat, collaboration, resistance, and liberation. In elegant Parisian bookstores, you will find tables filled with works by and about Marc Bloch, a gentle historian of the Middle Ages who wrote a stinging account of the defeat after he was demobilized in 1940. He became a hero of the underground, and was taken, tortured, and executed less …

Sanskrit prayers and dosas: Inside one of the oldest Hindu temples in the US

Sanskrit prayers and dosas: Inside one of the oldest Hindu temples in the US

Published by Sam Flores

FLUSHING, N.Y. (RNS) — Temple bells echoed through the sanctuary as priests chanted Sanskrit prayers before black granite deities draped in silk and fresh flowers. Barefoot worshippers carrying coconuts, bananas and jasmine garlands moved from shrine to shrine as families from across the country gathered to mark the anniversary of the Hindu Temple Society of North America’s consecration, a tradition observed each year on the same date the U.S. celebrates its founding. The date is fitting. The Hindu Temple Society of North America, officially called Šri Mahã Vallabha Ganapati Devasthãnamri, is the second-oldest traditional Hindu temple founded by Indian immigrants in the United States. It opened its doors on July 4, 1977, after years of fundraising and planning by Indian immigrants who had settled in the New York metropolitan area. Sri Venkateswara Temple in Pennsylvania, the first traditional Hindu temple founded by Indian immigrants, was consecrated only a few weeks earlier on June 8, 1977. After passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the national-origins quota system, there was a surge in …

Trump resurrects oldest GOP scare tactic over democratic socialist wins

Trump resurrects oldest GOP scare tactic over democratic socialist wins

Published by Sam Flores

It was only a matter of time before Donald Trump went full Joe McCarthy. Since the president first entered politics, he’s been using many of the classic Red Scare tactics: enemies lists, purges, denaturalization, expulsions, jailing of political opposition. It’s been done before, here and elsewhere. But it looks like Trump now sees it as his magic key to the midterms. Republicans have been playing this card for nearly a century now. Throughout the Cold War, they tarred the Democratic Party with the communist label with some success, especially during the early post-war years of the 1940s and 1950s. The investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Army-McCarthy hearings dominated the political discourse for years, with everyone in government and throughout the entertainment industry looking over their shoulders, worrying that their youthful attendance at a left-wing meeting would land them in hot water. In those early days of television, it became the biggest show in the country, and certain people hovering around those who were perpetrating these witch hunts had a lingering, profound …

At 4,800-years-old, Methuselah is the world’s oldest living tree – predates the Egyptian pyramids

At 4,800-years-old, Methuselah is the world’s oldest living tree – predates the Egyptian pyramids

Published by Jenni Sidey

In California’s White Mountains, a bristlecone pine called Methuselah has held on for nearly 4,800 years, outlasting kingdoms, droughts, and whole eras of human history. Its battered trunk poses a basic question that still pulls scientists uphill: how does a tree live this long? It does not look built for grandeur. Methuselah is not especially tall, and it does not command attention the way a giant sequoia does. But age, not size, is what sets it apart. It is widely accepted as the world’s oldest known non-clonal tree, a single living organism rather than one that survives by cloning or regrowing from itself. That distinction has made the tree a symbol of endurance, but its survival is tied to a hard, stingy place. Methuselah grows just below the tree line in a subalpine zone marked by thin soil, bitter winds, and freezing temperatures. Where richer forests reward speed, this landscape rewards restraint. A 4,800-year-old tree named Methuselah survives in California’s mountains. (CREDIT: Shutterstock) A life built on slow growth Great Basin bristlecone pines survive by …

Huge crater in Australia may be the oldest impact structure on Earth

Huge crater in Australia may be the oldest impact structure on Earth

Published by skeptic

The landscape in the North Pole Dome crater in Western Australia Curtin University A huge crater in Western Australia was created by an asteroid strike 3 billion years ago, according to a mineral-dating technique. This would make it the oldest impact crater on Earth – but other researchers have questioned its proposed age. The North Pole Dome crater, also known as the Miralga impact structure, was first described by Chris Kirkland at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, and his colleagues in 2025. They estimated that it could be up to 100 kilometres wide. Kirkland and his team found a layer of rock containing cone-shaped features called shatter cones, which form only after a high-impact event, such as an asteroid strike. Their original study didn’t directly date this rock, but based on correlations with dated rocks in the layers above and below, they proposed that the impact was 3.47 billion years old. This would make it more than 1.2 billion years older than the Yarrabubba crater in the south of the state, which is regarded as …

Earth’s oldest asteroid impact struck 3 billion years ago

Earth’s oldest asteroid impact struck 3 billion years ago

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. In 2025, paleogeologists announced the discovery of the world’s oldest known asteroid impact. Trace evidence of the strike is still standing in northwest Australia, and the team estimated the region known as the North Pole Dome (NPD) formation dated back around 3.5 billion years ago. However, the timeline needs to be corrected a bit after months of further analysis. But at roughly 3 billion years old, however, the asteroid strike still remains the most ancient example of a cataclysmic interstellar event on Earth. The details are laid out in a study published today in the journal Geology and hinge on miniscule trace minerals. “The impact left a ‘mineral clock’ behind. By dating minerals that were remade or newly grown in the damaged rocks, …

Oldest known plague outbreak killed hunter-gatherer children

Oldest known plague outbreak killed hunter-gatherer children

Published by skeptic

The shared grave of a boy and girl, whose remains were found to carry traces of Yersinia pestis DNA Vladimiri Bazaliiskii Ancient DNA from hunter-gatherers buried near Lake Baikal in what is now Siberia suggests there were deadly outbreaks of the plague as long as 5500 years ago. The finding runs counter to the long-standing idea that major disease outbreaks arose along with the adoption of farming during the so-called Neolithic revolution. “The expectation is that big outbreaks of disease affecting entire communities didn’t exist at all before the Neolithic revolution,” says Ruairidh Macleod at the University of Oxford. “What we see here is clear evidence for a really devastating outbreak of plague that’s affecting an entire community of hunter-gatherers at Baikal, and that flies in the face of that.” The bacterium Yersinia pestis has caused some of the deadliest pandemics in history: the Plague of Justinian that began in AD 541, the Black Death from 1346 and a third plague pandemic that began in 1855 and killed at least 15 million people worldwide. Y. …

Oldest traces of plague discovered in prehistoric teens buried in Russia

Oldest traces of plague discovered in prehistoric teens buried in Russia

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. The word  “plague” typically conjures horrible visions of the  bubonic plague , that  killed over one third of Europe’s population during the 1300s. The bacterium that causes the plague, however, is much older than the medieval era. In fact, the disease has been torturing humans for at least 5,500 years, according to a study published today in the journal Nature .  In the paper, researchers detail how they recovered and sequenced ancient DNA from the teeth of 42 prehistoric hunter-gatherers—including several children and teenagers—from four sites near Lake Baikal in Siberia, Russia. The total genetic material included DNA from the individuals themselves, and the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis, which they found in 18 of the hunter-gatherers.  Their work represents the oldest detection of …