In every age, people are certain that only the things they have deemed valuable have true value.
In 1352, Ibn Batuta, the greatest Arab-language traveler of the Middle Ages, who had journeyed overland across Africa, Europe, and Asia, reported visiting the city of Taghaza, which, he said, was enti...
Chloride is essential for digestion and in respiration. Without sodium, which the body cannot manufacture, the body would be unable to transport nutrients or oxygen, transmit nerve impulses, or move m...
Castiglione has 150 employees. But every March another 120 are hired to work the tonnara. The leader is known by the Arab word Raiz, and the fishermen sing an Arab song, Cialome (pronounced SHALOMAY),...
At about this time the Asiatic wolf, a fierce predator that despite its small size would eat a human if it had the opportunity, came under human control because its friendly young cubs could be fed an...
Anthimus’s pronouncement on garum has echoed through Western cooking: Nam liquamen ex omni parte prohibemus, We ban the use of garum from every culinary role.
And another small point, or two actually; Aldus was the first to use the modern semicolon.
Cows are the leading source of hamburger meat in America. Dairy cows are very lean because they put everything into producing milk, so they make good lean ground meat.
It was one thing to talk of using technology to topple the authority of the aristocracy and the Church, but who or what would replace them? Diderot and the French revolutionaries had assumed it would...