Forget all those Christmas cards with their ideal scenarios and antiseptic smiles. Stables are filthy and they stink[…]

She was soon followed by Glentworth, who stepped slowly and anxiously towards the dressing-room, and, ere he reached it, heard, with a delight the wayworn traveller and anxious husband alone can know, Isabella's cry of joy,...

Darkness everywhere, a whole winterful of it at his back.

As Galileo showed in his tract La Bilancetta, or “The Little Balance,” a scientist of Archimedes’ stature could have achieved a far more precise result using his own law of buoyancy and an accurate scale, something far more common in the ancient world than a very precise pycnometer, which is used to measure displacement.