Men first went down to the sea not in ships, or even boats. They used what- ever expedients they could find to get themselves across deep water.
Some of these expedients are still in use, historian Lionel Casson notes in Ships and Seamanship in the An-cient World (Princeton, 1986). "A New Zealand aborigine today paddles over lakes astride a bundle of reeds, an Iraqi herdsman crosses streams on an in- flated goatskin, a Tamil native does his fishing drifting with a log under his arms while...
Since the "normalization" of Sino-American relations in 1979, most U.S. scholarship on China has focused on politics and economics. But historians have also learned much about how ordinary Chinese variously have coped with the rigors of everyday life. Here, journalist Alice Greenway describes the plight of rural women in Canton before World War II, and how one woman, Ah Bing, joined others, through a network of "sisterhoods," in vows of spinsterhood to escape forced marriage and poverty.
What are stars? Why do those tiny points of light sparkle with different colors? How far away are they?
Astronomers use physics and mathematics to create new images
of stars. For them, the delight of seeing stars on a clear, dark night is
enhanced by searching for a unified understanding of the universe.
Key discoveries opened the study of the universe as a whole. At the beginning of this century, astronomers had a limited sense of the size of the universe. Then, in 1924, Edwin Hubble (1889-1953)...
You see then, studious reader, how the subtle mind of Galileo, in my opinion the first philosopher of the day, uses this telescope of ours like a sort of ladder, scales the furthest and loftiest walls of the visible world, surveys all things with his own eyes, and, from the position he has gained, darts the glances of his most acute intellect upon these petty abodes of ours-the planetary spheres I mean,-and compares with keenest reason- ing the distant with the near, the lofty with the deep.
From D...
Kenneth Brecher and Michael Feirtag, expand on astronomy's archaeological aspects. In addition to describing ancient Egyptian and Babylonian astronomy, Comell ex- plains the relevance of specific ancient observatories in the Far East and Africa; Brecher's and Feirtag's collection of eight essays leading archaeoastrono- mers focuses on such matters as the first scientific instruments and the medicine wheels of the Plains Indians. Providing a close look at particular cultures, Native American Astronomy...
cabinet debated whether or not to allow the United States, under the terms of a 1979 decision by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), to deploy 48 Tomahawk cruise missiles on Dutch soil. For the Netherlands, this was, in the words of New York
Times correspondent James M. Markham, "the most momentous and tormenting national security decision in postwar history."
For professional rather than political reasons, Mr. Bik probably hoped the missiles would be approved. The edition...
THE DUTCH
"The People of Holland may be divided into several Classes: The Clowns or Boors (as they call them), who cultivate the Land. The Mariners or Schippers, who supply their Ships and Inland-Boats, The Merchants or Traders, who fill their Towns. The Renteneers, or men that live in all their chief Cities upon the Rents or Interest of Estates formerly ac- quired in the Families. And the Gentle- men and Officers of the Armies."
So wrote Sir William Temple, Brit- ain's ambassador t...