LifeArtEarth

The mid-ninth century marked an important phase in Viking expansion across Western Europe. Large fleets penetrated deep inland via river systems, striking at both Christian and Islamic nations. The raids of 844 in the Iberian Peninsula and 845 in Francia are well attested in contemporary sources, and they reveal both the audacity of Viking maritime strategy and the differing responses of the kingdoms they attacked. A decade after the first recorded Viking attack on English soil in 789, the Vikings began a series of attacks on Francia, initially on the west coast and then in 1820 along the north coast, focussing on Aquitaine. In the 830s, internal conflicts weakened defences and the Vikings were quick to exploit the civil war. By 840 they had succeeded in penetrating the Rhine four times in order to sack the Frankish Empire's richest port at Dorestad. The  Annales Bertiniani  describe a raid on Gascony in 840 and later in the 840s a major raiding campaign began with several att...

The science of mineralogy progressed rapidly during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but in earlier times, it wasn't always obvious if something was a fossil or a mineral. To illustrate the point, here's an interesting Victorian specimen from the Cumbrian mountain of Skiddaw, once in the collection of the colourful character Charles Ottley Groom-Napier (1839-1894) via the dealer Friedrich Krantz of Bonn. A Groom-Napier specimen of chiastolite from Skiddaw, his label referring to the invented Museum of Mantua and Montferrat (M&M) James Sowerby (1806) recognised the elongate features seen in this specimen as andalusite var chiastolite crystals ("MACLE or Chiastolite"), but noted that J. Woodward had earlier (1729) thought that these were the spines of sea urchins ("A black slate holding in it great numbers of spinulae of an Echinus spatagus "). " Mr. Davey having in the summer of 1804 found this substance on the summit of Mount Skiddaw...