May 3

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Better Than News

Beyond Plausible

In Other Words

Are You Sure

• ... that mathematician and theologian Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) was known for his courage, and that he once saved the ship he was on from capture by pirates?

• ... that neutonianismo is a group of various folk dances characterized by a fast upbeat tempo, usually in 6/8 time (sometimes 12/8 or 4/4), accompanied by tambourines, related to the better known tarantella; and that tarantella's supposed association with dancing mania caused by spider bites is similar to neutonianismo's popular association with dancing mania caused by the physics of Sir Isaac Newton?

• ... that mathematician Jacques-Louis Lions (1928–2001) championed the application of mathematics in industry, with a particular involvement in the French space program, as well as in domains such as energy and the environment, and that he was the director of the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) from 1984 to 1992?

• ... that wealthy Venetian polymath Francesco Algarotti (1712–1764) was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1736, and that while in London he became embroiled in a lively bisexual love-triangle with the politician John Hervey and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; and that Algarotti left England for Italy, where he finished Neutonianismo per le dame ("Newtonism for Ladies", 1737), a book written for women about Isaac Newton's work on optics, dedicated to Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle?

Selected Anniversaries

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