Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.
Photochrome of a glacier, Grindelwald, Switzerland, c. 1890. © Rijksmuseum.
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Miscellany
A scholar in Peking contracted malaria in 1899 and was given medication with an ingredient labeled “dragon bones.” The bone chips, he found, were inscribed with writing dating back to China’s second dynasty. Thousands more were uncovered in the decades following; many of these “oracle bones” had inscriptions recording celestial events, which scientists have since used to calculate changes in the length of an earth day and in the rate of the earth’s rotation.
The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star.
—Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1825Lapham’sDaily
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Roundtable
Lapham’s Quarterly Is on Hiatus
But the American Agora Foundation is already planning for the future. More
The World in Time
Robert D. Kaplan
Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power. More