After Getting Stuck in a Sculpture at the National Gallery of Art, This Barred Owl Is Now Flying Free (www.smithsonianmag.com)
Created by artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen in the late 1990s, Typewriter Eraser, Scale X is a large, colorful sculpture depicting this once-common but now obsolete tool. It stands outdoors at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.
The National Zoo's Giant Pandas Bid Washington, D.C. Farewell (www.smithsonianmag.com)
Upon their arrival in China, 25-year-old Mei Xiang and 26-year-old Tian Tian will enjoy “a luxurious retirement,” while their son Xiao Qi Ji will have the opportunity to find a mate of his own, NZCBI’s director, Brandie Smith, tells NBC Washington’s Maggie More.
Rodin Sculpture Has Been Missing From Scottish Museum Collection for Nearly 75 Years (www.smithsonianmag.com)
The piece is a plaster version of one of the figures from the French sculptor’s “Les Bourgeois de Calais”
Did Ancient Egyptians Know Meteorites Came From Space? (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(Unusually for a headline, the answer is at least a tentative yes.)
TIL Kudzu growth in the US has been way overestimated. Newer estimates stated that Asian privet had invaded some 3.2 million acres—14 times kudzu’s territory (www.smithsonianmag.com)
In news media and scientific accounts and on some government websites, kudzu is typically said to cover seven million to nine million acres across the United States. But scientists reassessing kudzu’s spread have found that it’s nothing like that. In the latest careful sampling, the U.S. Forest Service reports that kudzu...
TIL The first air conditioner was created not for cooling a room but to prevent humidity causing swelling pages and blurry prints in a printing press (www.smithsonianmag.com)
At the turn of the 20th century, humidity threatened the reputation of Brooklyn’s Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographic and Publishing Company’s high-quality color printing. After two summers of extreme heat disrupted business and caused swelling pages and blurry prints, the printing company found that a nascent cooling industry...
Grappling With Climate Change and Overtourism, Italy Is Betting Big on Train Travel (www.smithsonianmag.com)
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/1086439...
in 1795 France won a naval warfare against Netherland and UK with... Horsemen... (www.smithsonianmag.com)
TIL that there are approximately 299 people cryogenically frozen in Scottsdale, Arizona (www.smithsonianmag.com)
The human cryopreservation project faces skepticism from medical and legal authorities