Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋 @bibliolater@qoto.org

The Romance languages borrowed many words from Germanic.

Word-initial [w] from Germanic became [ɡw] in most Romance languages. For example, *werra became 'guerra' in Italian.

Spanish and Portuguese then reduced [ɡw] to [ɡ] before [i] and [e], French everywhere.

More examples:

The #metric system is adding two new prefixes for extremely large numbers and two for extremely small numbers.

You probably know how big a kilogram is. But what about a ronnagram?

For reference, the mass of Earth is about six ronnagrams. Jupiter is about two quettagrams. An electron is a rontogram. And the mass of a bit of data on a mobile phone is about a quectogram.

#science #measurement #math

Learn more: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/metric-system-prefixes-what-to-know

If you're studying early Massachuetts, then check out our list of archives for the Bay State. These are some of the best research libraries in the United States.

#VastEarlyAmerica #AmericanHistory #Histodons #Geneadons #Genealogy

https://www.earlyamericansources.org/massachusettsarchives

Equatorial Table Sundial, 17th century, German

(Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien)

Swear words in different languages - why do they sound as they do? https://theconversation.com/swear-words-we-studied-speakers-of-languages-from-hindi-to-hungarian-to-find-out-why-they-sound-the-way-they-do-192473 (Courtesy @theconversationau) #study #language

High resolution scans of every single photo taken during the Apollo program is available on Flickr through NASA's "Project Apollo Archive."

I'm going to post the link but let me warn you right now it is very easy to lose a couple hours in there.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/albums/page1

Taken 50 years ago today with a film camera, and developed when the Apollo 17 crew got back home, the "blue marble" photo of Earth is believed to be the most reproduced image in human history.
https://theconversation.com/the-first-photograph-of-the-entire-globe-50-years-on-blue-marble-still-inspires-175051

#News #OnThisDay #OTD #TodayInHistory #Space #Earth

#books

Happy 200th Birthday to Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz, born in Boston #OnThisDay in 1822. Agassiz was the co-founder and first president of Radcliffe College. She also wrote several books about natural history and was one of the first women members of the American Philosophical Society.

#History #WomensHistory #RadcliffeCollege #histodon #histodons #Massachusetts

#introductions Hey everyone!

Early American Sources is a free website that links scholars to online resources dedicated to the early Americas. We have information about archives, digitized collections, online databases, published primary sources, and so much more. We post new content regularly, so give us a follow!

#VastEarlyAmerica #Histodons #Geneadons

https://www.earlyamericansources.org/

Mercator size vs. true country size
by Neil Kaye

Here's one for the medievalists and early modernists.

Eadmer's Historia novorum in Anglia, written in the 12th century, first saw print under the editorial care of the great John Selden in 1623.

The Harry Ransom Center's copy preserves the entirely standard, unassuming boards of its original 17th-century binding.

The title-page, though, reveals it to be a special copy, indeed:

At the top, the poet and playwright Ben Jonson has inscribed it w/ his Senecan motto, Tanquam Explorator.

At bottom, Jonson has written his name w/ a note that the copy was given to him by "its very erudite and famous editor."

#rarebooks #libraries #histodons