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Archive: October 2019 (9 Posts)

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The Perplexing Solar Corona and the Space Environment It Creates: Lecture with NASA’s Nicholeen Viall November 7

Posted by: Ellen Terrell

This post was authored by Stephanie Marcus, Science Reference Librarian in the Science, Technology, and Business Division. NASA Observatories examining the atmosphere of the Sun are revealing extraordinary detail in the solar corona. Material from this mysteriously super-hot outer layer expands outwards to become the solar wind, accelerating beyond the speed of sound and bathing …

Print of side view of Raven facial features

The Raven Quoth

Posted by: Jennifer Harbster

It's hard for the raven to shake the association to doom and gloom found in literature, religion, art, vocabulary (e.g. raving mad), and legends- and it doesn't help their case that a group of them is called an 'unkindness' of ravens. There is so much more to the raven than omens of bad luck.

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Covent Garden’s Market

Posted by: Ellen Terrell

Covent Garden Market was, and is, a beehive of activity. It sits near the Royal Opera House, St. Paul’s church, and the Theater Royal (on Drury Lane) and is only a short walk from Waterloo Bridge. Today it houses a number of shops and restaurants and is one of those places that everyone going to …

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How Much for That Tincture?

Posted by: Natalie Burclaff

Recently I received a question from a researcher wondering about the price of a commodity one could purchase in a pharmacy in the late 1800s. The question led me to the drug store supply industry at the turn of the 20th century and to our collection of price indexes published by pharmaceutical companies. A 1905 …

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Office of Scientific Research and Development Collections

Posted by: Nate Smith

The materials from the Office of Scientific Research and Development represent original research conducted by the Allies during World War II. The tens of thousands of items in the Library's OSRD collection include technical reports, drawings, memos, medical research results, and other documents that were either in the open literature or have since been declassified.

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IT IS ROCKET SCIENCE! Exploring Earth’s Escaping Atmosphere with NASA’s Douglas Rowland on October 17

Posted by: Jennifer Harbster

NASA's Dr. Rowland will talk about atmospheric escape, his adventures in Norway, and what is being learned from the VISIONS-2 data in his lecture, Exploring Our Escaping Atmosphere: Going above the Top of the World to Watch the Sky, on Thursday, October 17, from 11:30 a.m.-12::30 p.m. in the Madison building's third floor Pickford Theater.

Later construction of Charles Babbage's difference engine.

The Enchantress of Number

Posted by: Nate Smith

This blog was written in preparation for Ada Lovelace Day, which occurs every year on the second Tuesday of October and celebrates women in STEM. Augusta Ada Byron, daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron and intellectual Lady Byron (whom Byron once named the “Princess of Parallelograms”), was born in 1815.  Shortly after Ada’s birth, …

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Obscure and Endangered: Book and Fiber Art Display, Oct 15 &16

Posted by: Jennifer Harbster

On Tuesday, October 15, and Wednesday, October 16, 2019, between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., the Library of Congress Science and Business Reading Room will pair fiber art quilts with our October reading room book display Obscure and Endangered. The book display highlights lesser known endangered plant and animal species, ranging from the Goldstreifiger to the Jellyfish Tree.