Seismic detectors around the world have been capturing a curious and strange phenomenon for decades. Every 26 seconds the earth emits a pulse, a small microseism barely perceptible, that nobody knows why it happens or what causes it. Until recently, no one knew where it came from either. The first to document the phenomenon was…Continue readingThe mysterious seismic pulse that repeats every 26 seconds, coming from the Gulf of Guinea
Africa
There is an episode from the eighteenth century that in a way seems to come from a work of fiction: that of Abram Petrovich Gannibal, an African prince kidnapped by the Otmans but bought by a Russian ambassador who took him to his country, where, after a careful education, he reached high military and political…Continue readingAbram Gannibal, the African slave who became a military engineer, general of the Russian army and great-grandfather of the writer Alexander Pushkin
The ancient Greek city of Cyrene (in present-day Libya), where Eratosthenes was born, was founded by settlers from Thera (Santorini) on the advice of the Oracle of Delphi around 632 BC. It soon prospered and became one of the richest cities in the Mediterranean. A plant, whose trade Cyrene dominated for centuries, had a lot…Continue readingThe mystery of the disappearance of the most valuable medicinal plant from antiquity