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Luke Howard was an industrial chemist in London. He studied clouds as a hobby in the early 1800s. In his Essay on the Modification of Clouds, he gave the standard cloud formations the names we still use today. Cirrus is the Latin word for a wisp of ...

Twain's 1898 telelectroscope story made the daily doings of the whole globe visible from a prison cell.

An 1832 book charted lucky travel days on the Deccan: leave Tuesday, eat coriander seeds first.

The Delsarte system charts 81 combinations of upper lid and brow, from an 1885 acting manual.

A 15th-century Persian book of snake omens covers all 30 days of the Zoroastrian calendar, good and bad.