Comments on: Photographs of some historical & archeological artifacts

Photographs of some historical & archeological artifacts

growabrain — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 18:11:06 -0800

Michael Faraday's chemical chest, 19th century.
The end of Darwin's walking stick.
Galileo's original telescope.
Napoleon's toothbrush, c 1795 (with engraved "N" at bottom).
Carved Olive Pit, China (1737).
Throne of Charlemagne (790). Until 1531, it served as the coronation throne the Kings of Germany, being used at a total of thirty-one coronations.
Ishtar Gate, ca 575 BC. Built on the orders of Nebuchadnezzar II, it was a gate to the inner city of Babylon.
Tolkien's service weapon from WWI.
Breastplate, North Peru - A.D. 1000/1470.

- A chef's hat recovered from the Titanic's wreck. (From). - The top hat Lincoln wore on the night he was assassinated. Also, The Derringer pistol used to kill him. - Unfinished obelisk in Aswan. More here. - Tutankhamun's tomb chair. - A blackboard used by Einstein in a 1931 lecture in Oxford. The last three lines give numerical values for the density (ρ), radius (P), and age of the universe. Wooden bucket from Utrecht. (6th century) - A submerged Sherman tank off Saipan (1944). - Rock carvings at Alta, Northern Norway, made some 5200 years old. Preserved Warsaw ghetto wall. - A set of German playing cards from 1430 (click on each for hi-rez). - Tsar Nicholas II' Packard Twin-6 with Kégresse track. - Queen Elizabeth 1 gloves. - Faberge Egg known as Catherine the Great Egg. - Marie-Antoinette's Grand Apartment, Versailles. - The Codex Gigas, the largest extant medieval manuscript in the world. It is also known as the Devil's Bible because of a large illustration of the devil on the inside and the legend surrounding its creation Devil. - The inkwell that was used to sign the world's second national constitution - Constitution of May 3, 1791 Poland. - Rock crystal dice, marked one to six. 1st-2nd Century AD. Roman Imperial Period. - A prosthetic hand was made for a 16th-century Knight. Also, an artificial toe from Egypt (950—710 B.C.). - Mayan pipe (AD 900-1500). - Lion man of the Hohlenstein Stadel - approximately 32,000 years ago. - Elephant Armour from 17th century (India). - The Pazyryk carpet - the oldest rug in the world. - A carbonised loaf of bread with the stamp 'Property of Celer, Slave of Q. Granius Verus' from Herculaneum, 79 AD. (Via a new r/subreddit with lots of large photos.)

By: angerbot

angerbot — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 18:33:59 -0800

Pff, the oldest rug in the world for right now.

By: ZenMasterThis

ZenMasterThis — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 18:39:29 -0800

What a coincidence: These are the names of all my favorite hipster bands. You've probably never heard of them.

By: Turkey Glue

Turkey Glue — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 19:01:31 -0800

Reminds me of the rocking chair in which Lincoln was shot.

By: ikahime

ikahime — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 19:08:39 -0800

Galileo's telescope gave me chills (in a good way). Thanks for the post!

By: atomo

atomo — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 19:14:13 -0800

I think Napoleon's toothbrush was ultimately purged from the Warehouse 13 collection when it was found to have only minor effects on gingivitis over a long period of daily use.

By: localroger

localroger — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 19:24:23 -0800

All Titanic artifacts are moving, and it's worth seeing the collection if you can at all. It's partly a time capsule from 1912, but the path by which those artifacts get to us 100 years later is breathtaking.

By: arcticseal

arcticseal — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 19:25:54 -0800

Not forgetting Napoleon's penis, which was recently the subject of a Bugle podcast.

By: barnacles

barnacles — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 19:27:27 -0800

Note that the Alta rock art has been colored in with red ?chalk? to accentuate it. The art was pecked into the stones and probably wasn't originally colorized. It's an interesting bit of rock art, though. The fjord on which the art area is located has a pretty good record of water level change (loweing) for the last few thousand years, and it looks like the people doing the carving were always trying to do so close to the water line. As a result of their chasing the water lower and lower there's a fantastic chronology by which researchers can date the rock art motifs. There's also some neat continuity and relationships between historically and ethnographically known images used by the Sámi people and images seen in the Alta rock art.

By: calamari kid

calamari kid — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 19:41:12 -0800

ikahime: "Galileo's telescope gave me chills (in a good way). Thanks for the post!" We got to see it in person at the Museo Galileo in Florence. Chilling in a different way, they also have his finger. Really a cool museum to visit. It used to be the Museum of the History of Science, and had all kinds of interesting devices and displays from science history. One room had wax sculptures all along the upper walls depicting cutaway views of a variety of pregnancy complications, which were creepily realistic.

By: Scientist

Scientist — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 19:43:27 -0800

Never knew Darwin was a goth. Wouldn't have guessed.

By: MrFTBN

MrFTBN — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 19:50:27 -0800

I really want to fill in those missing Stuttgart cards with Photoshop and print out my own custom deck. This whole list is cool.

By: grimjeer

grimjeer — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 20:04:03 -0800

The Ishtar Gate is in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Breathtaking. The same museum houses the 'Pergamon Altar' of King Eumenes II, from the city that is the basis for the museum's name. Very recommended if you happen to be in the corner of the world.

By: lumosh

lumosh — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 20:07:40 -0800

Recently, I've been listening to a history of WWI via Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast (highly recommended). Coming across this picture of Tolkien's service weapon, I am reminded how a stray bullet or piece of shrapnel almost robbed us of our core myth and the imaginative landscape of childhood (sorry for the melodrama and hyperbole, but, I mean, come on).

By: trackofalljades

trackofalljades — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 20:07:52 -0800

Clicked through to say "now I wanna watch Warehouse 13" but atomo beat me to it, so I'll at least include a link. ;)

By: Iridic

Iridic — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 20:15:03 -0800

I really want to fill in those missing Stuttgart cards with Photoshop and print out my own custom deck. For my part, the only card I need is the Ace of Stags.

By: penduluum

penduluum — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 21:07:27 -0800

I am reminded how a stray bullet or piece of shrapnel almost robbed us of our core myth and the imaginative landscape of childhood Perhaps it did, and we just don't know it.

By: Halloween Jack

Halloween Jack — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 21:07:55 -0800

I thought that there must be some mistake WRT the Throne of Charlemagne, since it looks a bit like plywood held together with brackets. Turns out that that is indeed the throne, and the marble is yellowed due to having been covered with tarpaper during WWII to protect it from bombing.

By: tavella

tavella — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 21:20:19 -0800

Like Scientist, I would not have expected Darwin to have a skull-headed cane.

By: bystander

bystander — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 21:40:41 -0800

Like calamari kid, the Florence science museum drove home to me the depth of European cultural history. From memory, that is only one of 3 or 4 telescopes made by Galileo on display, and the finger relic has stayed with me as a apposite cross over between religious worship and science.

By: foobaz

foobaz — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 22:19:30 -0800

It amazes me that only a few dozen generations ago, it was practical to make that breastplate out of solid gold. What a vastly different world it must have been.

By: Dip Flash

Dip Flash — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 22:26:12 -0800

The paragraph backstory on that prosthetic hand is worthy of at least a few novels and a movie: According to reports, the spring-operated fingers enabled him to grip a sword or a lance, and he remained a fearsome figure on the battlefield, even leading a group of rebels against the Holy Roman Empire in 1525, fighting the campaign against the Ottoman Empire of Suleyman the Magnificent under Emperor Charles V in 1542, and serving under Francis I in the 1544 Imperial invasion of France.

By: zeptoweasel

zeptoweasel — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 22:28:29 -0800

At the Florence science museum, looking at Galileo's finger: "But does it move?"

By: mml

mml — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 23:05:41 -0800

Michael Faraday's bookcase is in use in the President's office if the Institution of Engineering and Technology in London. Due to a booking oversight, this was the only room available for a recent meeting - the IET were politely insistent that we didn't put our coffee mugs on it.

By: Dr Dracator

Dr Dracator — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 00:09:42 -0800

The throne of Charlemagne looks pretty underwhelming, but Wikipedia explains: the marble came from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and was considered a relic, hence the lack of decoration. Also a game board is carved in one of the plates, presciently symbolizing German dominance of the casual boardgame market

By: homunculus

homunculus — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 01:35:24 -0800

Very nice. Thanks for posting this, growabrain.

By: Joakim Ziegler

Joakim Ziegler — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 02:57:39 -0800

The Ishtar Gate is something. It kind of sucks that it was split up and spread all over the world, though, and that the rear, larger part of the double gate was deemed "too big" and is just in storage. Judging by the models, the whole thing would be even more impressive.

By: Joakim Ziegler

Joakim Ziegler — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 02:58:32 -0800

growabrain: "Catherine the Great Egg." She was a good egg. Great, I don't know.

By: valkane

valkane — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 06:26:13 -0800

For reasons I don't totally understand, I thought that Sherman Tank was pretty groovy.

By: IAmBroom

IAmBroom — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 13:01:04 -0800

calamari kid: Chilling in a different way, they also have [Galileo's] finger. The very one he lifted in response to the Church's teachings on cosmology. No, really: it is his middle finger!

By: bukvich

bukvich — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 13:11:07 -0800

The armor Ned Kelly wore during his shootout with the Victoria police.

By: bukvich

bukvich — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 13:34:16 -0800

Albert Einstein's report card.

By: ohshenandoah

ohshenandoah — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 17:01:08 -0800

In regards to Dr Dracator's comment about the checkerboard on Charlemagne's throne-- Checkerboards, either carved tables or painted tablecloths, were used as an abacus for calculating payments-- hence the Department of the Exchequer.

Accounting Historians Journal > Early Accounting: The Tally and Checkerboard: In Britain, the counting board probably dropped out of use somewhat earlier. Shakespeare still had references to it: Iago speaks scornfully of "this counter-caster", and an ignoramus "cannot do it [arithmetic] without compters". Two things lessened the need for the abacus. One was cheap paper. The other was the use of Arabic numerals. Europe was slow to accept these. "Ciphering" was long regarded as a bizarre and mysterious art. Arabic figures had however percolated into common use by the seventeenth century, and "made the elementary rules of arithmetic accessible to every child". An arithmetic book of 1668 explains manual accounting, but omits this section in its 1699 edition. The Scots exchequer abandoned its board perhaps about 1660

By: Harald74

Harald74 — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 07:07:40 -0800

Was Tolkien's service weapon given to him to keep after his service was over? It seems unlikely that it would be pulled out from some dusty armoury later and exhibited otherwise.