You know this fellow by his more famous collaborator, Mozart, but it is DaPonte who wrote the words to the operas, without which, of course, the singers would have naught to sing but rather random sol, fa, la, and ti. In the 1820’s, he undignified the zenith of his...
“Nike?” I hear you ask. “Pellinore, are you sure? Doesn’t look like a shoe.” (Pause for several minutes as Pellinore recovers his academic courage….) Nike, my friends, is the Greek goddess of victory. “Oh, victory! I see, because of her fast running...
True or false: you can see in the dark if you hold up a dead fish. A trick question, of course, because the answer is that it depends upon the fish. Some fish glow in the dark; others don’t. Some earthworms glow in the dark; others don’t. Amoeba, fungi, insects,...
This is a wagon with benches. The French name, Char à banc, means (wait for it) “wagon with benches.” Rather literal, oui, but accurate, and since the French invented it, they’ve a right to name it however they wish, so wagon with benches let it be. The first of...
Well, it’s a dinosaur, of course. But which? There aren’t very many of their fossils found, most of them being in North America where, you know, everything is paved over. But!, of those which have been found, we conclude the pachycephalosaurus was over fifteen feet...
