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Philip Norman (1842–1931) was an English artist who focused on old London, to document it before it disappeared. His paintings were frequently accompanied by historical information about the buildings. His palette is rather muted as he is primarily interested in detailing the old buildings.
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1977 Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope picked up a very unusual signal that has come to be known as the WOW signal. It was extremely strong for cosmic radiation. Further, it was narrow band. Normal cosmic radiation is broadband, that is spread over several frequences, but the WOW signal was confined to a very narrow band.
It has long puzzled astronomers because there is no known source for such a signal. Terrestrial interference was considered and discarded, and other natural possibilities have also not held up.
Naturally an alien source has been a favorite of many. I'm not sure about that, I've watched enough 1950s sci-fi movies to know that aliens are always warning humans to knock-it-off before we create a super weapon that blows up the universe. It could be a declaration of war before they come to Earth to stomp us flatter than a pancake to save the cosmos. You never know.
Anyway, this video purports to have explain a natural cause for the WOW signal. They claim that it clears it all up, but we've heard that before.
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The Codex Laud, sometimes called the book of Death, is an Aztec illuminated religious book. Its creation predates the arrival of the Spanish. Its main theme is death and the afterlife. It features Aztec deities and is a calendar that lays out the rituals of their religion.
Its gods are unknown to us, and its imagery opaque, so it comes across to us as only being violent and bloodthirsty. Then again, that is usually the territory of hellfire.
The above video discusses the satirist Lucian of Samosata's work A True Story. In it, his protagonists get caught up in a whirlwind and get carried to the moon, where they get involved in a war between the Moon and the Sun over Venus.
Because it takes place in outer space, a lot of people call it the first science fiction story. I don't think that is accurate. I think he is actually lampooning old-timey travel books which had a tendency to add all sort of fanciful nonsense to the tales to boost interest and sales.
He also threw barbs at his contemporaries. One of his lines is "Plato was not there. It is said that he was living in an imaginary city under the constitution and laws that he himself wrote." So, it fits much more under the label of travel-writing satire and general lampoonery than science fiction. Still, it is interesting.
By the way, there are no women on the moon, so maybe it is actually a tragedy.
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My regular readers may recall that on my last vacation/fishing trip I had planned to do some whale hunting. Alas, my scheme was foiled by the TSA when they refused to allow me to board the airplane with my harpoon. Stupid bureaucrats. This post, in honor of my dream, shows artwork depicting whale hunts. Oh, what might have been.
From Moby Dick:
Now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon waned away; for in a whaler wonders soon wane. Besides, now and then such unaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the unknown nooks and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating outlaws of whalers; and the ships themselves often pick up such queer castaway creatures found tossing about the open sea on planks, bits of wreck, oars, whale-boats, canoes, blown-off Japanese junks, and what not; that Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the cabin to chat with the captain, and it would not create any unsubduable excitement in the forecastle.
