Kihoku Astronomical Museum

Ceremonial dagger, Turkey, Ottoman Empire, 16th century,

Given to Gábor Bethlen, Prince of Transylvania.

Ebony, emerald, ruby, silver, steel, turquoise,

length: 38,5 cm, width: 6,8 cm.

Courtesy: Iparművészeti Múzeum (Museum of Applied Arts) Budapest

the transformation of daphne

miniature from a copy of ovid's metamorphoses (middle french translation by clément marot). france, after 1531

source: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 117, fol. 28v

Marguerite Churchill, photographed by Max Munn Autrey, 1930.

Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his Friends (1868) by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Mitsubishi F-15J Eagle of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, showing a Mount Fuji paint scheme.

Taken in 2005 by photographer Katsuhiko Tokunaga.

✞ 666 ✞

Kos, 2024

One of my favorite historical tidbits is that Arab traders, for centuries, fooled Europeans into thinking cinnamon came from a rare, vicious and fearsome cinnamon bird.

The belief was so prevalent, in fact, that the mythical cinnamon bird shows up in the writings of Herodotus and Aristotle, all the way into medieval European manuscripts where it’s illustrated in all its fierce, cinnamony glory:

Pliny the Elder expressed skepticism of the bird in his writings, rightly assuming that it was a tale invented to keep control on the trade and prices by reducing competition, but the belief was already so widespread that it persisted in many areas into the early 1300’s.