Miscellany

After his death in 1665, Pierre de Fermat’s son Clement-Samuel discovered a copy of Arithmetic, a third-century math book by Diophantus, in which Fermat had written on one page, “It is impossible…for any number which is a power greater than the second to be written as the sum of two like powers [xⁿ + yⁿ = zⁿ for n > 2]. I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.” His son published the note, and “Fermat’s Last Theorem” beguiled mathematicians for over 350 years, until it was proved by Andrew Wiles, with Richard Taylor, in 1995.

For Better or Worse

The origins of lucky and unlucky charms.

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Voices In Time

c. 1804 | Missouri

Father Knows Best

Black Hawk pinpoints the origin of his people’s difficulties.More

Voices In Time

c. 3760 BC | Eden

Ye Shall Be As Gods

The temptation of Eve.More

Miscellany

Isolated from opium by the German chemist F. W. A. Sertürner around 1804, morphine (named after Morpheus, the Greek god of sleep and dreams) was used to treat opium addicts. Invented by Bayer Pharmaceuticals in 1898, heroin (derived from the Greek word for hero) was used to treat morphine addicts.

Miscellany

“A seaman in the coach told the story of an old sperm whale, which he called a white whale, which was known for many years by the whalemen as Old Tom, and who rushed upon the boats which attacked him, and crushed the boats to small chips in his jaws, the men generally escaping by jumping overboard and being picked up,” recorded Ralph Waldo Emerson in his journal on February 19, 1834, adding that the whale “was finally taken somewhere off Payta Head by the Winslow or the Essex.” It was the wreck of the Essex in 1820 from which Herman Melville drew inspiration for Moby Dick.