A few days ago, I was watching an episode of the Antiques Roadshow.  People were bringing their treasured objects for expert examination to the grounds of a stately house in St Ives,…

Amy Harmon's excellent, recent article in the New York Times describes how the Florida orange juice industry may soon be wiped-out because of a new bacterial disease spread by an introduced…

The contrarian in me forces me to argue against sides I would ordinarily agree with when the argument is made from a flawed premise; California's Proposition 37 got a thumbs down from me because…

Electric Batteries - by A. Volta In this article I present my translation of Alessandro (Alexander) Volta's original French paper, which I published as -Batteries électriques - By A. Volta Volta's…

Batteries électriques - by Alexander VoltaIn 1800 the Royal Society published Alexander Volta's description of how he built his batteries. It is not widely known that Volta invented both the 'wet'…

News (?), Top-Secret (?), Latest revelation (?)Strange, the EU was aware of the NSA (spying) global gathering of electronic data since 2001.  Sorry folks, this is not news.  I wrote about…

In A. D. 1300 in Poland, more precisely in the region of Kashubia, was coined the term "nachzehrer" to define the female vampire, or "chewing the shroud" or "devourer of the night."  The…

Most people, including many scientists and electrical engineers, have never heard of Wilhelm Josef Sinsteden.  He invented the lead-acid battery and published his findings in 1854.  In 1860…

I was watching the recent two-part BBC series Bill Bailey’s Jungle Hero, about Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 – 1913), in which Bailey and his hidden camera team travelled through Indonesia sampling the…

Legendary Confederate fighter Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson died 150 years ago but the actual cause of his death has been a subject of debate. And it was again at the 20th annual Historical…