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Italian Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci was born #otd in 1452.

Da Vinci turned his hand to drawing, painting, science, anatomy and engineering among other things – these studies of tank-like machines were drawn around 1485. (via @britishmuseum)

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Dinner for One 
Mary Pratt ,1994
(via @CanadaPaintings)
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Astute minds might wonder why “vaccine” is the same as the Latin word meaning from/of cows. The first vaccinations came from the discovery that smallpox could be prevented by an inoculation of the much milder cowpox virus (variolae vaccinae). (via @Languagebandit)

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DANTH’S LAW states that “if you have to insist that you’ve won an internet argument, you’ve probably lost badly.” (via @qikipedia)

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Gaelic Lament

The lament runs like a thread through Gaelic poetry, pipe music, and song and is thought to originate centuries ago from keeners, who were paid to help others grieve by wailing at funerals in Scotland and Ireland.

“The language itself has many words for sorrow and sadness. It’s when you translate a Gaelic song, you realize you run out of words saying sorrow or sad. You don’t run out in Gaelic.” – Margaret Bennett



Gaelic Lament

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Dating from 1011, the earliest written record of the English alphabet has 29 letters: 23 letters of the Latin alphabet were listed alongside two characters meaning ‘and’ (the ampersand, &, and Tironian et, ⁊) plus the Old English letters wynn (Ƿ), thorn (Þ), eth (Ð) and ash (Æ). (via @HaggardHawks)