The Vice Presidents that history forgot

A well written, entertaining piece by Tony Horwitz about his visit to the museum of Vice Presidents: It is a nonpartisan collection of stories and artifacts on all 47 vice presidents – the only museum in the land devoted to the nation’s second-highest office. This neglect might seem surprising, until you tour the museum and …

The accidental history of the @ symbol

  From Smithsonian Magazine: Called the “snail” by Italians and the “monkey tail” by the Dutch, @ is the sine qua non of electronic communication, thanks to e-mail addresses and Twitter handles…The origin of the symbol itself, one of the most graceful characters on the keyboard, is something of a mystery. One theory is that …

Set that bottle adrift…98-year old message in a bottle found

From the Smithsonian: Andrew Leaper, a Scottish skipper, has discovered the world’s oldest message in a bottle. He found the bottle while on the same fishing vessel where another mate had set the previous record, for a bottle that had been floating in the ocean for 92 years and 229 days. Now, Leaper has broken his …

New App, Leafsnap, lets you identify a tree species by photographing a leaf

If you’ve ever wondered what type of tree was nearby but didn’t have a guide book, a new smartphone app allows users with no formal training to satisfy their curiosity and contribute to science at the same time. Scientists have developed the first mobile app to identify plants by simply photographing a leaf. The free …

Personal photos of the Space Shuttle Discovery arriving in Washington D.C.

Last week, a friend of mine, Kirby Plessas, witnessed the arrival of Space Shuttle Discovery into Washington D.C. Here are some of the photos she took, see the full set on Flickr.