Book Sank on the Titanic

Only black-and-white images exist of the first "Great Omar" but a digital colourisation 

was created in 2001

One of the most lavishly decorated books the world has seen was despatched from London to New York in April 1912. The jewel-encrusted edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám was taken aboard the RMS Titanic and sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, exactly 110 years ago.

A replacement was finished at great expense by the late 1930s but it was promptly incinerated by German bombers as the British capital was ravaged during the Blitz.

The young man behind this extravagant presentation of the polymath Khayyám's poetry would soon drown in an English seaside resort.

Would anyone dare to commission a third "Great Omar"?

'The greater the price the more I shall be pleased'

In 1911, Francis Sangorski finished work on a binding he had been labouring over at his Holborn workshop for two years.  READ MORE...

Sea Level Changes Destroyed Societies

Archaeologists have linked rising and lowering sea levels in the Atlantic Ocean to the ebbs and flows of ancient civilizations in southern Brazil.

The findings, which incorporate several lines of past archaeological evidence, suggest even large, resilient, and cooperative coastal communities can easily go out with the tide.

When analyzing and dating a series of prehistoric shell 'mountains', known as sambaquis in the local language, researchers noticed some significant changes in southwestern Brazil about 2,500 years ago.

At this time, the size and frequency of sambaqui sites suddenly began to decrease, possibly indicating the dissolution of what were, for millennia, dense and stable shellfish-eating populations.

Other research in the area has also identified a rapid reduction in sambaquis around this time, but some researchers think these changes mostly occurred from the rise of ceramics and crops. The use of this new technology meant populations didn't need to rely as much on fish or mollusks, leading to a reduction in shell piles.

However, the new study found the decline of shell middens started before the introduction of pottery. So why, then, were sambaqui practices abandoned?

The answer might have to do with an extreme, retreating tide. By reassessing human and animal remains from Babitonga Bay – home to Brazil's largest concentration of sambaquis – researchers have put forward a new timeline.

According to more than 400 radiocarbon dates, the spread of ceramics in Babitonga probably started around 1,200 years ago.  READ MORE...

Back in the USSR... not really... East TN... much better

We left Destin at 7:00 am EST which was 6:00 am Central Time which means we were up at 5:00 am this morning in order to get home at a reasonable hour since we had an 8.5 hour drive ahead of us...  and no telling how long we might be delayed due to construction, or traffic, or an accident...  

We stopped once for gas and use the restroom and a second time for something to eat most of which we ate in the parking lot before we returning to the Interstate.  We were delayed a little by construction and even less by traffic but it took us 9.5 hours to return to our home which means we were delayed about 30 minutes by our 2 stops and another 30 minutes by either traffic or construction or both.

In another hour, we had unloaded the car and put everything away from our trip although we are saving mowing of the lawn until tomorrow after we have gotten a good night's sleep....  so, in 10.5 hours we have just about been able to return to normal.

Two of our 3 cats met us at the door but our Siamese who gets really pissed off when we leave for more than a day or two, decided that he not show his face until a couple of hours after our return...  I guess he did not want to appear too eager to let us know that he missed us.

It was nice to have a vacation and eat out every night and it was nice to sit in chairs and watch the water...  even if it was the Gulf and not the Atlantic Ocean...  but, if the truth be known, I did the same damn thing down there that I did here, plus I had to spend all that extra money and drive for 18 hours...  not really sure if it was worth it or not... and unlike the Caribbean commercials my wife and I did not fall in love with each other all over again.