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…

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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…

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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…

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