Anima Loci
How many types of lightning are there, and how did the Victorians perceive and rationalise them? This article by James Broome, first published on The Strand Magazine in 1897, puts together photographs from both observatories and amateurs to show lightning in many of its different forms and shapes, while reflecting… Read more »
La “Storia filosofica dei secoli futuri” è un’opera di narrativa politica e anticipatrice della fantascienza, scritta dall’autore italiano Ippolito Nievo e pubblicata nel 1860. Il romanzo tratta in modo satirico aspetti della storia dell’umanità fino all’anno 2222, prevedendo di fatto alcuni eventi mondiali realmente accaduti, tra cui la costruzione dell’Istmo… Read more »
‘Philosophical History of the Centuries to Come’ is an 1860 political, proto-sci-fi work by Italian writer Ippolito Nievo. The novel satirically describes aspects of the history of humanity until the year 2222, notably anticipating actual world events, including the construction of the Isthmus of Suez, the uprisings leading to the… Read more »
Mundus Subterraneus, published in 1664, is the final result of German Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher’s geological investigations. Here we publish an extract from the chapter, De Lapidibus, in which Kircher muses on the cognitive phenomenon which will be later known as pareidolia – seeing faces and figures within natural formations, in… Read more »
In August 1835, the American newspaper, The Sun, published a series of incredible astronomical reports attributed to Sir John Herschel, one of the leading British scientists of his time. Thanks to a “telescope of vast dimensions and an entirely new principle”, Herschel and his team had apparently discovered traces of alien life on the moon, from water and… Read more »
The subterranean world is one of the few areas of this planet that we are far from having complete maps of. Due to their very nature, embedded deep into masses of otherwise impenetrable rock, the chartering of caves requires continuous exploration, not to mention luck to find new openings and… Read more »