Period of time. A curiously irresistible expression for many writers, as here: ‘Marcos claimed that the seizures could be expected to continue for a considerable period of time’ (Sunday Times). Make i...
Pair of Stephens Island wrens, which were found only on a small, isolated island in New Zealand’s Cook Strait. All were killed by a lighthouse keeper’s cat.
One cannot predict future events exactly if one cannot even measure the present state of the universe precisely!
Noticed on my city map that just up the road was the Musée International de la Croix-Rouge et du Croissant-Rouge (the International Museum of the Red Cross and Red Breakfast Roll), which sounded much...
Lunar material, it is thought, came from the Earth’s crust, not its core, which is why the Moon has so little iron while we have a lot.
Journal Science in 1980 contending that women are genetically inferior at mathematics.
If you make monomers wet they don’t turn into polymers—except when creating life on the Earth.
Get a peek at them was seldom matched by more engaging qualities, like respect. I’m afraid we always used to adopt—let’s say a patronizing attitude toward her, Crick later recalled. Two of these men w...
Designed and built the world’s first municipal park. This park so captivated the American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted that he modeled Central Park in New York on it.
Before 1923 there was almost no lead in the atmosphere, and that since that time lead levels had climbed steadily and dangerously.
At Birkenhead, near Liverpool, designed and built the world’s first municipal park. This park so captivated the American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted that he modeled Central Park in New Y...
Acute, chronic. These two are sometimes confused, which is a little odd as their meanings are sharply opposed. Chronic pertains to lingering conditions, ones that are not easily overcome. Acute refers...
Activity. Often a sign of prolixity, as here: ‘The warnings followed a week of earthquake activity throughout the region’ (Independent). Just make it ‘a week of earthquakes’.
A Croatian seismologist named Andrija Mohorovičić was studying graphs from an earthquake in Zagreb when he noticed a similar odd deflection, but at a shallower level. He had discovered the boundary be...
You shall be led from hence to the place whence you came…and your body shall be opened, your heart and bowels plucked out, and your privy members cut off and thrown into the fire before your eyes.
You have no engagements, commitments, obligations, or duties; no special ambitions and only the smallest, least complicated of wants; you exist in a tranquil tedium, serenely beyond the reach of exasp...
You are totally at the mercy of nature in this country, mate. It’s just a fact of life. But I tell you one thing. What’s that? It sure makes you appreciate something like this when you know it could a...
Yet it has 58 uses as a noun, 126 as a verb, and 10 as a participial adjective. Its meanings are so various and scattered that it takes the OED 60,000 words—the length of a short novel—to discuss them...
Working quickly was the trick of it. When Samuel Pepys underwent a lithotomy—the removal of a kidney stone—in 1658, the surgeon took just fifty seconds to get in and find and extract a stone about the...
Work expands to fill the time available for its completion, still known as Parkinson’s Law.