posted: June 25, 2002 | by chelsie

Soap is a combination of fatty acids and alkali. Its discovery would have been one of observation; every cooking pit had the ingredients--ashes, fats, and water. A carbon chain from the fats and a sodium or potassium ion from the ashes formed a unique molecule. The carbon chain being lipophilic (fat-loving) and the ion being hydrophilic (water-loving) allowed oil and water to mix. [Click here to read more...]

posted: June 18, 2002 | by chelsie

Glass is a combination of silica, soda, and lime. Soda (sodium carbonate) serves to reduce the melting point of the silica, forming 'water-glass' or sodium silicate. (Sodium silicate is water soluble.) Lime (calcium carbonate) fixes the glass so it will not dissolve in water. Early glass was usually colored or opaque due to impurities in the ingredients. [Click here to read more...]

posted: June 11, 2002 | by chelsie

When Europeans came to settle North America, they found most modes of transportation--horses, oxen, and wagons--useless. Forests covered the land from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River. The easiest and best routes inland were the streams. Most were not navigable by boat and explorers adopted the eastern native transportation, the dugout. [Click here to read more...]

posted: June 4, 2002 | by chelsie

Phoenicia (Canaan) was a land of cities, a strip of coast between the mountains of Lebanon and the Mediterranean. It was a crossroads where overland trade and sea routes met. By the Fifteenth Century BCE, Phoenicia was an empire of business and trade. [Click here to read more...]

posted: May 28, 2002 | by chelsie

Indian or fishberries (Anamirta cocculus (L.) Wight and Arnold) were known in the old herbals as Fructus cocculi meaning the fruit of Cocculus indicus. This vine is native to the Coast of Malabar and islands around India. The nut-like seeds joined the trade routes through the Middle East--one of its common names indicating both misuse and general misunderstanding of geography was Coca del Levant (cocaine of the Middle East). [Click here to read more...]

posted: May 21, 2002 | by chelsie

Between 521 and 519 BCE, Darius of Persia, expanded his realm into the Indus valley. Herodotus (Book IV, 404 BCE trans. George Rawlinson) wrote, "Wishing to know where the Indus emptied itself into the sea, he sent a number of men...among them Scylax of Caryanda, to sail down the river...and, after a voyage of thirty (?) months, reached the place from which the Egyptian king [Necos]...sent the Phoenicians to sail round Libya (Africa)." [Click here to read more...]

posted: May 14, 2002 | by chelsie

In 38 BCE, Mark Antony went to Egypt to visit Cleopatra VII, the last ruler of the Ptolemaic Dynasty. Julius Caesar was dead; his nephew Octavian was now Caesar; Rome was divided in its loyalties. [Click here to read more...]

posted: May 7, 2002 | by chelsie

In 394 CE, Alaric, king of the Visigoths, made a pact with Emperor Theodosius I of Rome. The Huns had been attacking the borders of Visigoth territory and an alliance with Rome gave the Visigoths more military power. Emperor Theodosius died the following year. [Click here to read more...]

posted: April 30, 2002 | by chelsie

In England in 1642, Oliver Cromwell was a vehement anti-Catholic and strong supporter of the Parliamentarians. He opposed King Charles I who believed in a divine right to rule. Cromwell was appointed commander of a cavalry regiment and won a number of victories over the Royalists. [Click here to read more...]

posted: April 23, 2002 | by chelsie

In the rainforests of the Amazon basin, natives hunted using pucunas (blowguns) and darts dipped in ampihuasca (curare), a mix of plant extracts. Each group had their own particular blend, the recipe of which was jealously guarded. Darted prey would drop from the trees and later die or be killed. [Click here to read more...]

posted: April 16, 2002 | by chelsie

The 1633 edition of Gerard's Herbal called the plant Ananas pinias or the pine thistle: "the meat of this fruit is sweet and very pleasant of taste...there are certain small fibres in the meat thereof, which though they do not offend the mouth, yet hurt they the gums of such as too frequently feed thereof." [Click here to read more...]

posted: April 9, 2002 | by chelsie

In May 1819, an assistant surgeon in the British army, Dr. William Montgomerie, was stationed with the East India Company in Singapore. Sometime before 1824, a Portuguese warship stopped in Singapore. The ship's surgeon, Dr. Jose d'Almeida decided to stay. D'Almeida set up a trading company and bought land for plantations. [Click here to read more...]

posted: April 2, 2002 | by chelsie

Ogier de Busbecq was an ambassador for the Hapsburgs. In 1555, he was sent to negotiate with Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire. While traveling the area of Constantinople, de Busbecq saw the fabulous tulips cultivated in the Turkish empire. De Busbecq sent bulbs to his botanist friend, Carolus Clusius working in Prague and Vienna. [Click here to read more...]