The secret of the Stradivarius' perfection

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And probably there is no more beautiful music than that played on a Stradivarius.
A violin made by Antonio Stradivari more than 300 years ago (like the one in the picture), can be worth up to 5.750,000 dollars, the largest sum of money ever paid to have it!
What is the secret of its perfection?
Nobody knows it for sure but some scientists believe that the Italian volcanic ash the Stradivarius' instrumets were treated with, has given to the wood a unique consistency, responsible for the wonderful melodies.

The steam engine came to light

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The Scottish inventor wrote that to a friend a few years before patenting something that would change the world forever.
In 1781, the steam engine came to light.
Actually, the first engine of James Watt had only 10 horsepower and more than ten years the steam finally pushed the big locomotives (with a thousands of times greater power).
How did it work?
The steam was heated by burning wood and it increased its pressure. This pressure was used to push the locomotives with a mechanical system.
Even today we use a lot of steam. Indeed, the nuclear power plants use this fluid to move electric turbines, with the difference that the steam is heated by nuclear reactions.

"One giant leap for... Google"

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Google never ceases to make the history of technology. Yesterday, at 10.40 am the spacecraft of the Cygnus  Obrital of Sciences Corporation took off to bring his precious load into space to reach the International Space Station (ISS). 
The spacecraft carries a prototype of intelligent robot that belongs to the project SPHERES. It is a 8-inch-diameter miniaturized satellite with a lot of functions, able to operate even inside the International Space Station. 
NASA had already tested this technology, but this time there is collaboration with Google because the heart of the new mini-satellite will be a smartphone based on Google's Project Tango: an ultrapowered version of last generation's Android smartphone. Equipped with a special 3D sensor and different cameras, for now it will be used to build a three-dimensional map of the interior of the ISS.

Excavations debunk a myth about the Pyramids

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One of the greatest lies in history.
Or better an inaccuracy which is generated by the erroneous belief that the Pyramids were built by slaves in Egypt. 
The Greek historians were the cause of all this because they couldn't convince themselves of the fact that the construction of the immense Pyramids could be possible without large numbers of slaves to work day and night. In addition, the Bible shows that slavery was widespread in Egypt so we believe that enormous Pyramids were built by hordes of slaves.That's wrong! 
Excavations near the Pyramid of Cheops have unearthed tombs of real workmen, people paid to build the pyramids and not slaves. 
The testimony of a strike in the 29th year of the reign of Ramses III was even found in a papyrus and it was discovered that during the floods of the Nile, the population was employed as laborers to build dams. 
As if that was not enough, during the construction of monumental tombs, that required even many years of work, villages where workmen could live were built and there were also schools!!

Non-human DNA in a 5000 years old mummy

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A mummy from 5300 years that never ceases to make history.
We're talking about Otzi, a mummy found the Alps in 1991 and still under study. A few days ago a team of scientists has made ​another analysis on Otzi, discovering that the new DNA is a different kind of code between the genes.
The importance of this research lies in the fact that scientists have analyzed for the first time the entire spectrum of the DNA of the mummy even if the most curious thing is to know what this non-human DNA belongs to.
It is a bacterium, 'Treponema Denticola', an opportunistic pathogen Involved in the development of periodontitis, unfortunately for fans of science fiction movies, far away from the hypothesis of a prehistoric virus or alien DNA. 
But it seems that in some ailments we have something in common with our ancestors...

The Coca-Cola conquers the world

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An invention that has literally conquered the world.
The Coca-Cola is a drink that is on the tables all over the world, so widespread as to become a trademark of 71.8 billion dollars!
Maybe not even its inventor, the American pharmacist John Stith Pemberton, could imagine the success of his drink when on May 8, 1886 in Atlanta he invented a new alcohol-based remedy against tiredness, the 'Pemberton's French Wine Coca'.
Pemberton replaced alcohol with an extract of kola nuts that together with a mixture of coca leaves formed the 'Coca-Cola'.
In fact, the coca plant was and it is considered a health hazard so the extract that is used is deprived of all toxic substances, then we should not be impressed by the name 'Coca'. Paradoxically, this excerpt is the 'secret ingredient' of the famous drink: the 'aroma 7x' is jealously guarded and kept secret by The Coca-Cola Company. 

The Coca-Cola's logo, although it looks very nice in the fonts used, was created with little attention by an accounting of the Company that used the font 'Spencerian Script', very common in the United States at that time. But this is not the greatest curiosity about the Coca-Cola. 

We all know that the character of Santa Claus, with a long white beard, was inspired by St. Nicholas, patron of children. So, the costume of Santa Claus would become red only once, in the 30s, the Coca-Cola Company used it for its Christmas advertising, and dressed him in red and white, just like the logo of its famous drink. 

In short, we can say that Santa Claus is 'Coca-Cola branded'!!

The International Holocaust Remembrance Day should be celebrated in July

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Do you recognize the monument in this photo?
Apart from experts, it is difficult to answer.
We all know that on January 27 the liberation of the Auschwitz Camp is celebrated (from 1945) but it was not the first camp to be liberated.

The Red Army arrived in Majdanek in Lublin (Poland) on July 22, 1944 finding crematory ovens, mass graves and packages of poison gas: all clear evidences of the mass murder.
Although the Nazis were able to burn the field before escaping, many evidences of the Holocaust remained intact. 

The photo depicts the monument to the victims of the Majadnek Camp, the first extermination camp liberated, almost a year before the Auschwitz Camp's liberation.

Researchers discover the origin of galaxies using a giant telescope

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A few weeks ago, a group of British, Dutch and Italian researchers have answered to the question: where are the stars born?
Using the ESO's Very Large Telescope, an immense telescope of the European Southern Observatory,the researchers have shown that in the galaxy IC5063 there is a 'super black hole' that with its gravity 'shoots out' hydrogen molecules at a speed close to that of light.
The stars' formation is closely linked to the presence of this gas so it is like the black holes were 'generators of stars'.

The toothpaste. A 2000 years old invention.

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Our ancestors were able to heal tooth decay.
The discovery has beenrecently made by in an ancient cemetery in Sudan where human remains, dating back to 2000 years ago, have been analyzed in laboratory. 

The results of the analysis showed that the ancestors had very healthy teeth: less than 1% of them suffered from tooth decay.
All this thanks to the 'Cyperus rotundus', a plant with special antibacterial properties that was used like both toothbrush and toothpaste.
However it is thought that the low percentage of caries is due to the fact that the ancestors, great hunters, ate mainly meat and very few carbohydrates (responsible for tooth decay). With the advent of agriculture everything changed  because people started to eat cereals with an increase of tooth decay.

The man who flew solo around the world

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A man with an eyepatch.
This was the characteristic feature of Wiley Post, the first man who made a complete tour of the world on an airplane, alone.
Using the auto-pilot and compass in place of his navigator, after leaving New York in 1933, he made ​​a stop in Berlin, the Soviet Union, Alaska and Canada, before returning to the starting point after 7 days, 18 hours and 49 minutes.
The American aviator had already been around the world in 1931, however together with a navigator and not alone.
His adventures ended two years after the big company, when Post crashed in Alaska in an attempt to fly over the North Pole to reach Russia.

When failures occur... even for the NASA!

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The NASA Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in the Martian atmosphere.

The spacecraft ended its journey at about 140 km altitude above the surface of Mars instead of entering the orbit of the planet is about 57 km. The Orbiter had been launched in 1998. 

No money. One apple.

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These few words can sum up the story of the Apple Computers' birth. 

Almost all of us know that it was born in a garage but a story becomes truly unforgettable when we can focus on its fine details. 

Wozniak (who was a hacker) had no money and could only draw his ideas on paper, without being able to put them into practice. 

The CD-Rom changes the way to preserve knowledge

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In the early Eighties, the floppy disk stored a maximum amount of information of 2 megabytes, a memory today not even enough to save a song in mp3 format. 

Did King Arthur really exist?

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For all, King Arthur is the protagonist of many stories set in the sixth century, in Britain. But King Arthur is only a legend or something more?

Some studies believe that he really existed with the name of Riotamus, a king of Britain lived in the period the famous stories speak about but unfortunately, we know very shortly about him.

"Happy Easter Adolph"

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These two soldiers wish Happy Easter to Hitler in their own way but they haven't well written the name of the dictator ("Adolf" and not "Adolph") and this made ​​them in some way famous.

The Hindenburg, the giant of the skies

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The Hindenburg was a great airship, so great that it is the largest flying object ever built! It was long 245m and wide 50m  and it contained a huge amount of hydrogen (very light gas that made it float in the air), touching a top speed of 135 kmph! 

The first mobile phone call

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On 3 April 1973, the director of Research Development at Motorola, Martin Cooper, made ​​the first phone call in history with a mobile phone.
But thas was just an experiment because only 10 years after the phone call of Cooper, the Motorola decided to produce a mobile phone with the cost of 4000 dollars! 

The United States Declaration of Independence

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The Declaration of Independence lead to the birth of the Federation of the United States of America.

The victory of people against the monarchy - The storming of the Bastille

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The storming of the Bastille is regarded as the event which started the French Revolution.

On July 14, 1789 Paris was in turmoil. The citizens were determined to rebel against the monarchy and to pursue their goal, they needed weapons. On the morning of that day they attacked the 'Hôtel des Invalides' (a building that housed wounded soldiers), grabbing 28,000 rifles and same cannons.

The giant of the seas becomes legend - The sinking of the Titanic

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The transtlantic Titanic owes its fame to its tragic end, the night between the 14th and the 15th April 1912.

It all started when the Titanic impacted with a giant iceberg on the route to New York. Despite the fully operating pumps, the water that came into the hull was too much in fact at 1.50 am of April,15, the prow (the part hit by the iceberg ) began to sink.