Tea at Trianon: Fountains of Diamonds

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, September 9, 2023

Fountains of Diamonds

From Live Science:

The breakup of supercontinents may trigger explosive eruptions that send fountains of diamonds shooting up to Earth's surface. Diamonds form deep in Earth's crust, approximately 93 miles (150 kilometers) down. They are brought up to the surface very quickly in eruptions called kimberlites. These kimberlites travel at between 11 and 83 mph (18 to 133 km/h), and some eruptions may have created Mount Vesuvius-like explosions of gases and dust, said Thomas Gernon, a professor of Earth and climate science at the University of Southampton in England. Researchers noticed that kimberlites occur most often during times when the tectonic plates are rearranging themselves in big ways, Gernon said, such as during the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea. Oddly, though, kimberlites often erupt in the middle of continents, not at the edges of breakups — and this interior crust is thick, tough and hard to disrupt. (Read more.)