Innovation
The Blackbird Sings
Several weeks ago My Own True Love and I had the pleasure of hearing a musician* play the oud and talk about its role in the multi-cultural mixing pot that was Islamic Spain. I sat and nodded my head in agreement as he talked about the spread of the oud through the Islamic world, and…
Read More
From the Archives: Alhazen–The First True Scientist?
Anyone who built a pinhole camera from a cereal box to watch the solar eclipse last week owes a debt to Islamic scholar Abu Ali al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham (ca. 965-1041), known in the West as Alhazen. Alhazen began his career as just another Islamic polymath. He soon got himself in trouble with the ruler of…
Read More
The Hello Girls of WWI
As I’ve mentioned before here in the Margins, now and then a bit of history begins to track me down. A name, event, or idea piques my interest and suddenly I stumble across it everywhere. Or at least in the footnotes to books on tangentially related subjects. Lately the “Hello Girls” of the first World…
Read More