Tea at Trianon: Two Minerals Never Before Seen on Earth

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, July 27, 2024

Two Minerals Never Before Seen on Earth

From Beauty of Planet Earth:

A giant meteorite that fell in Somalia in 2020 contains at least two minerals that have never before been seen on our planet. The minerals have been identified by researchers at the University of Alberta, according to a press release.

Tons of space material enters the Earth’s atmosphere every day but very few actually survive the journey through the atmosphere and hit the ground. Instead, they tend to burn up instantly from the outside in, as friction with the atmosphere causes them to ablate.

For this reason, few large meteorites reach the planet’s surface, and the one that fell near the town of El Ali in Somalia is definitely an exception. The celestial piece of rock weighs a massive 16.5 tons (15 tonnes), making it the ninth-largest meteorite ever found. (Read more.)