My Science School

A 3,500-year-old tablet featuring the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh was returned to Iraq recently, three decades after its disappearance. The clay tablet features characters in cuneiform, one of the oldest forms of writing known. It is believed to have been stolen from an Iraqi museum in 1991 while the country was caught up in the first Gulf War, says AFP. The Epic of Gilgamesh is considered one of the oldest pieces of literature in the world, telling the story of a Mesopotamian king on a quest for immortality.

The tablet contains a portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh written in the Akkadian language in cuneiform script - a system of writing on clay used in ancient Mesopotamia.

Scholars discovered the epic in 1853, when a 12-tablet version was found in the ruins of the library of an Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal, in northern Iraq.

The events revolve around King Gilgamesh of Uruk - an area corresponding to southern Iraq. The myth is based on a real king who ruled sometime between 2,800 and 2,500 BC.

The Dream tablet recounts a part of the epic in which King Gilgamesh describes his dreams to his mother, who interprets them as announcing the arrival of a new friend, who will become his companion.

Little is known about what happened to the tablet between 1991 and 2003, when it was bought by an antiques dealer in London. The dealer shipped the tablet to the US by international post without declaring formal entry.

In 2007, the dealer sold the tablet to another buyer with a false letter stating that it had been inside a box of ancient bronze fragments purchased in 1981.

It was sold again several times at auction in different countries before being bought in 2014 in a private sale by Hobby Lobby, an arts and crafts firm with a conservative Christian ethos. The company paid more than $1.67m (£1.2m) for the tablet, which was prominently displayed in its Museum of the Bible.

Doubts emerged over the tablet's provenance in 2017, when a curator at the museum sought more information about where it came from. The museum also informed the Iraqi government that the item was in its possession.

Credit : BBC News

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The oldest named individual tree, christened "Methuselah", was found by Dr Edmund Schulman (USA) and dated in 1957 from core samples as being more than 4,800 years old (4,852 years as of 2020); this age was later crossdated and confirmed by dendrochronologist Tom Harlan (d. 2013) at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona. An even older specimen of bristlecone sampled by Schulman in the White Mountains before he died was also crossdated by Tom Harlan, but not until 2009. This sample was also from a living tree, so the tree is aged 5,070 years as of 2020; this unnamed tree is currently the oldest verified living tree in the world. The precise locations of these trees are kept secret to protect them from vandalism/damage from over-trampling. The annual growth rings of old trees provide a valuable insight into our changing climate: the bristlecone climate record from dead wood extends back more than 9,000 years. The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest is located at around 3,050 metres (10,000 feet) above sea level in the White Mountains, east of the Sierra Nevada. Over time, the wind and rain has moulded the trees into strange shapes and forms made even more unusual by the sunshine, altitude and crisp air. Dr Schulman was a scientist from the University of Arizona when he came across Methuselah and an area in the forest is named the Schulman Grove in his honour.

Methuselah is classed as “individual" as it is not a clone. It is rare for any individual tree to exceed 3,000–4,000 years old.

Credit : Guinness World Records 

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The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus is the best example of Egyptian mathematics. Dating back to 1650 BC, it was copied by an Egyptian scribe named Ahmes from another document written around 2000 BC. It is named after Alexander Rhind, a Scottish antiquarian, who purchased the papyrus in 1858 in Luxor, Egypt. The papyrus is 33 cm tall and 5 m long and contains 87 mathematical problems as well as the earliest reference to Pi.

The Pharaoh’s surveyors used measurements based on body parts (a palm was the width of the hand, a cubit the measurement from elbow to fingertips) to measure land and buildings very early in Egyptian history, and a decimal numeric system was developed based on our ten fingers. The oldest mathematical text from ancient Egypt discovered so far, though, is the Moscow Papyrus, which dates from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom around 2000 – 1800 BCE.

It is thought that the Egyptians introduced the earliest fully-developed base 10 numeration system at least as early as 2700 BCE (and probably much early). Written numbers used a stroke for units, a heel-bone symbol for tens, a coil of rope for hundreds and a lotus plant for thousands, as well as other hieroglyphic symbols for higher powers of ten up to a million. However, there was no concept of place value, so larger numbers were rather unwieldy (although a million required just one character, a million minus one required fifty-four characters).

The Rhind Papyrus, dating from around 1650 BCE, is a kind of instruction manual in arithmetic and geometry, and it gives us explicit demonstrations of how multiplication and division was carried out at that time. It also contains evidence of other mathematical knowledge, including unit fractions, composite and prime numbers, arithmetic, geometric and harmonic means, and how to solve first order linear equations as well as arithmetic and geometric series. The Berlin Papyrus, which dates from around 1300 BCE, shows that ancient Egyptians could solve second-order algebraic (quadratic) equations.

Practical problems of trade and the market led to the development of a notation for fractions. The papyri which have come down to us demonstrate the use of unit fractions based on the symbol of the Eye of Horus, where each part of the eye represented a different fraction, each half of the previous one (i.e. half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, thirty-second, sixty-fourth), so that the total was one-sixty-fourth short of a whole, the first known example of a geometric series. Unit fractions could also be used for simple division sums.

The Egyptians approximated the area of a circle by using shapes whose area they did know. They observed that the area of a circle of diameter 9 units, for example, was very close to the area of a square with sides of 8 units, so that the area of circles of other diameters could be obtained by multiplying the diameter by 8?9 and then squaring it. This gives an effective approximation of ? accurate to within less than one percent.

The pyramids themselves are another indication of the sophistication of Egyptian mathematics. Setting aside claims that the pyramids are first known structures to observe the golden ratio of 1 : 1.618 (which may have occurred for purely aesthetic, and not mathematical, reasons), there is certainly evidence that they knew the formula for the volume of a pyramid – 1?3 times the height times the length times the width – as well as of a truncated or clipped pyramid.

They were also aware, long before Pythagoras, of the rule that a triangle with sides 3, 4 and 5 units yields a perfect right angle, and Egyptian builders used ropes knotted at intervals of 3, 4 and 5 units in order to ensure exact right angles for their stonework (in fact, the 3-4-5 right triangle is often called “Egyptian”).

Credit : Story of Mathematics 

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The 'tip' likely comes from the Rogues' Cant, which arose in Great Britain hundreds of years ago with the aim of keeping non-thieves from being able to understand what the thieves were talking about. In it 'tip' meant "to give; pass along". In the 17th century, the word spread to being used by non-thieves, referring to money given as a bonus for service rendered.

Tip is an old word, and it has nothing to do with either acronyms or the act of attempting to influence quality of service. Although the word has many meanings, both as a verb and as a noun, the use of the term as it applies to monetary rewards to servants dates to the 1700s. It first appeared in this context as a verb (“Then I, Sir, tips me the Verger with half a Crown” from the 1706 George Farquhar play The Beaux Stratagem) and was first recorded as a noun in 1755. However, the use of tip to describe the act of giving something to another (where that list of possible ‘somethings’ could include small sums of money, intelligence on horse races, or the latest silly joke) goes back to 1610. Tip slipped into the language as underworld slang, with the verb ‘to tip’ (meaning ‘to give to or share with’) being used by shady characters as part of the then-current argot of petty criminals.

Credit :  Snopes

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In today's parlance, it means 'to get fired'. The origin dates back to the 17th century when artisans used to come to work with their own tools for the job (usually in a sack). When an employer wanted to fire someone, all he did was hand him his sack and tell him to take his tools and leave.

The word sack itself has proven remarkably durable and well-travelled. We already saw the French sac and Dutch zak, which—along with the Old English sacc, precursor to today’s sack—go back to the Latin saccus (“sack, bag”). This, in turn, is from the Greek sakkos (??????), borrowed from a Semitic root that shows up in the Hebrew saq and Assyrian saqqu. The ultimate source—which I find incredible for such as simple, humble little word—may be Phoenician or Egyptian. 

To sack, or “plunder,” a city may also be related. Some etymologists have supposed Latin’s saccus produced a verb, saccare, literally “to put in a bag,” referring to plunder being carried off in bags.

Credit : Mashed Radish 

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Ulama Need to win, desperately!

Soccer might be the most popular game in South America, but the ancient Mayans had their own special sport. The game, a lot like volleyball, was played between two teams and the players had to keep the ball in the air throughout the play. The ball could be 'kicked' only with the elbows, forearms or hips. If you are imagining a scene with happy players casually bouncing off a light ball, then it's really far from the truth. For one thing, the ball was made of solid rubber and weighed a whopping nine pounds! Either team could score an instant win if they could somehow manage this superhuman feat - send the ball through a hole (only a little bigger than the ball) in a sideways hoop. Most importantly, winning was literally a matter of life or death - the losing team ended up losing their heads as well!

Papa Holua - surfing volcanic slopes

Hawaii is famous for surfing and you often find people surfing the waves bravely. Ancient Hawaiians loved surfing too, however they found it even more fun to do it on mountain slopes rather than the ocean. They liked a bit of challenge too, which is why players often liked sliding along the sides of a volcano! Specially designed sleds were used for this sport. Around 200 years ago, the sport was banned because it was (surprise, surprise!) dangerous.

Chunkey - Sharp eyes and a sharp spear

It might sound like a fun, light game, but for the ancient Native Americans who played it, it was very serious business, so much so that the spectators and the players gambled everything they owned on the outcome! Unless a player had good eyesight, it was really hopeless playing this sport. You see, it's about rolling a clay disc, about 3 inches in diameter, in an open area and throwing spears in such a way that the disc stopped close to or on top of the spear. Sounds easy? Try playing a version of this sport with sticks and rings and you'll know!

Fisherman's jousting Boat fights

When the ancient Egyptians weren't too busy hauling stones around to build pyramids or mummifying bodies, they liked to relax and play some sports. Particularly popular was 'fisherman's jousting'. Imagine this remarkable sight - two teams in boats rowing slowly towards each other on the Nile... and then all of a sudden they pull their oars out of the water and start hitting each other, turning it into a fierce match as each team tries to hit and knock the opponents into the river!

Venatio Man vs. Wild

Venatio is just a fancy name for a cruel gladiator-type game. Ancient Romans were as obsessed with brutal fighting as we are about cricket. In Venatio, slaves were pitted against different wild beasts, ranging from elephants to lions and cheetahs, in an arena. It's difficult to predict whether the players or the animals had the worst fate.

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In 1903, New York tea merchant Thomas Sullivan found that it was more convenient to send tea samples to his customers in small, hand sewn muslin bags rather than in boxes. But, instead of removing the loose tea, customers began brewing the bags intact, accidentally creating the first tea bags.

So, Sullivan began packaging his tea samples in little bags made of silk. The customers were meant to open the bags and pour out the tea to infuse it. In those days, his customers were using metal infusers to brew their tea. When they received the little bags of tea, they assumed that they were meant to be used like the infusers, so they just put the bags into the pot and poured hot water over them. It worked and the tea bag was born. Sounds like Sullivan’s customers were even more clever than he was.

This may be how the tea bag was popularized, but there is more to the story. Or, rather, there is another story about the invention of the tea bag. The true inventors of the tea bag seem to have done so at least seven years prior to Sullivan’s accidental innovation.

In 1901 Roberta C Lawson and Mary Mclaren filed a patent, which was granted, for a Tea-leaf holder. This tea leaf holder was what we today would call a tea-bag. And, unlike Sullivan, the inventors meant for the cloth mesh packages to allow liquid to pass through the contents and for each bag to hold just enough tea for one cup. That’s right. These women truly invented the modern tea bag, and on purpose. Although they were made of cloth instead of paper, they looked quite similar to the tea bags we know today. You can’t tell much from the patent images below, but they are basically depicting mesh bags.

Credit : Culinary Lore

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The word 'freelance' originates from the medieval mercenaries who hired themselves out to the highest bidder. The term was first used by novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) in Ivanhoe (1820) to describe a 'free lance' (indicating that the lance is not sworn to any lord's services). In modern times the term morphed from a noun (freelance) into an adjective (a freelance journalist), a verb (a journalist who freelances) and an adverb (she worked freelance), as well as into the noun 'freelancer'.

In the middle ages, the freelancers were the soldiers who offered their services to the kings who paid them. They were mainly such soldiers who had already lost their kings in wars and now fought for whoever they wanted to. These hired soldiers were common after 1000 A.D. These soldiers in English were more commonly known as condottiere. The term basically refers to the leader of a band of mercenary soldiers. Latin records indicate that these soldiers were initially called stipendiaries. Again as the name suggests, these are soldiers who worked on stipends provided.

These mercenary soldiers had their main origin in 13th century Italy.

Credit :  Truelancer 

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The earliest scissors known to exist appeared about 3,000 or 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (today's Iraq, mostly, but also parts of modern-day Iran, Syria and Turkey). Known as spring scissors, they consisted of two bronze blades connected at the handles by a thin, flexible strip of curved bronze. This strip served to bring the blades together when squeezed and to pull them apart when released.

The ancient Egyptians used a version of scissors as long ago as 1500 B.C. They were a single piece of metal, typically bronze, fashioned into two blades that were controlled by a metal strip. The strip kept the blades apart until they were squeezed. Each blade was a scissor. Collectively, the blades were scissors, or so rumor has it. Through trade and adventure, the device eventually spread beyond Egypt to other parts of the world.

The Romans adapted the Egyptians' design in 100 A.D., creating pivoted or cross-blade scissors that were more in line with what we have today. The Romans also used bronze, but they sometimes made their scissors from iron as well. Roman scissors had two blades that slid past each other. The pivot was situated between the tip and the handles to create a cutting effect between the two blades when they were applied to various properties. Both Egyptian and Roman versions of scissors had to be sharpened regularly.

Credit : Thought Co. 

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Exciting news from moon

It was the year 1835. A journalist from a popular New York newspaper of that time, The Sun, came up with a fun idea. In a series of six articles, he wrote about the discovery of fantastic creatures like beavers, unicorns, bison and bat-winged humanoids living on the moon. He attributed the discovery to none other than the famous astronomer, Sir John Herschel. Initially greatly amused by this, Herschel soon found himself in a soup as people started asking questions, completely falling for the hoax. The silver lining? The newspaper's circulation improved dramatically!

How spaghetti grows

We know what spaghetti is but there were hundreds of folks who weren't familiar with the famous Italian food in the 1950s. The BBC took advantage of this on April 1, 1957. It took only a 3-minute video footage showing people sincerely plucking spaghetti strands from trees to grab attention. Many people eagerly called the BBC to find out how to grow their own spaghetti trees. And the reply they got? "Place some spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best!"

Transforming a B&W television

Back in 1962, SVT, the only television network in Sweden, came up with a way to tease people. Imagine someone telling you that it was possible to watch your favourite programme in colour and that all you needed was a pair of stockings! A 'technical expert informed people that when stockings were stretched in front of their black and white television sets, light would be filtered out in a way that would allow them to see the broadcast in full colour! For best results, he added, it would be necessary to move their heads from side to side. Apparently, thousands of viewers fell for it and probably looked silly trying it out.

News for Asterix fans

In 1993, The Independent newspaper engaged in an archaeological prank that made Asterix fans cry out in joy. They announced the discovery of a 6000-year-old village near Lannion, France. That was a clever move because that was exactly where Asterix's creator had placed the story. They went on to mention finding Celtic coins with images of wild boar (boar was Obelix's favourite food!) They threw in the fact that the expedition was led by a team from the Oxford University for that extra layer of credibility.

Iceberg in Sydney Harbour

It was the year 1978, and people who went for a casual stroll near Sydney Harbour couldn't believe their eyes! A gigantic iceberg was hovering close to the shore. Electronics entrepreneur, Dick Smith, informed people that the iceberg had been towed all the way from Antarctica. It fooled even the Navy, as they offered to help moor the iceberg. It was a rainstorm that exposed the prank - the iceberg was actually a large barge wrapped in white plastic and covered in foam!

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