A draco was a Roman cavalry military standard borne by a draconarius. It was the standard of the cohort as the eagle was that of the legion. Draco took the form of a gaping wolf's head and mouth formed from cast metal, to the end of which was attached a 'body' of cloth or silk fabric in the form of a windsock....
NASA sting leads to arrest of woman allegedly trying to sell moon rock for $1.7 million A woman claiming to sell a moon rock was arrested in Lake Elsinore on Thursday morning as part of an undercover sting by NASA investigators aided by local police. The investigation, which spanned several months, l...
Dürer star charts light up auction offering Albrecht Dürer may not be the name most people would think of as producing the earliest printed star charts, but his will be the name that counts when Sotheby's offer a very rare pair of charts in a March 30 print sale. In fact, the artist and master printmaker...
Saint Helena is an island of volcanic origin in the South Atlantic Ocean. Most historical accounts state that the island was discovered on 21 May 1502 by the Galician navigator João da Nova sailing at the service of the Portuguese Crown, and that he named it "Santa Helena" after Helena of C...
Louis Alexander Slotin (December 1, 1910 - May 30, 1946) was a Canadian physicist and chemist who took part in the Manhattan Project, the secret US program during World War II that developed the atomic bomb. On May 21, 1946, Slotin accidentally began a fission reaction, which released a burst of hard...
The first scientific drifting ice station in the world, North Pole-1 was established on May 21, 1937 some 20 km from the North Pole by the expedition into the high latitudes Sever-1, led by Otto Schmidt. "NP-1" operated for 9 months, during which the ice floe passed 2,850 kilometres. Read...
A possible magnitude 15.5 supernova was discovered on the 10th May, 2011. The supernova was located 2" east and 2" north from the center of a spiral galaxy in the constellation Libra. Position (2000): RA = 14 47 28.62, Dec = -22°16'39".5
Astronomers have found a planet with a galactic case of hot flashes. In just six hours, this planet four times the size of Jupiter heats up by more than 1,200 degrees, according to a study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's the first observation of changing weather"...
Pseudo-satellites, ground-based substitutes used when signals from real satellites are not available, can deliver accurate positioning information in places where conventional solutions fail. This was demonstrated on 27 June in Helsinki harbour as part of a project supported by ESA. For ge...
When the Space Shuttle Endeavour lifts off in April, joining the astronauts on board will be an unlikely passenger: Krtek the Little Mole. The Little Mole- actually, an eight-inch plush version engineered to meet NASA specifications - will be making one giant step for Czech pop culture during a two...
Microsatellite picks up science gong AN engineer who is pioneering the rollout of broadband in Antarctica has won the country's top prize for taking technological insights to the marketplace. Last night, electromagnetic engineer John Ness received the Australian Academy of Technological Sci...
Europeans were the real cannibals, according to new book European royalty and eminent scholars swallowed parts of the human body as medicine, including its flesh, blood and bones, right up until the end of the 18th century, a new book on medicinal cannibalism reveals. For well over two hundred yea...