The Goliath bird-eating tarantula is the biggest tarantula in the world. The body measures up to 4.75 inches (12 centimeters) with a leg span of up to 11 inches (28 centimeters).
The Goliath bird-eating tarantula lives in the rainforest regions of northern South America, including Venezuela, northern Brazil, Guyana, French Guiana and Suriname. It lives in the deep rainforest, in silk-lined burrows and under rocks and roots.
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The Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus), also called sunroot, sunchoke, earth apple, or topinambour, is a species of sunflower native to eastern North America, and found from eastern Canada and Maine west to North Dakota, and south to northern Florida and Texas. It is also cultivated widely across the temperate zone for its tuber, which is used as a root vegetable.This plant comes from North America and has nothing to do with either Jerusalem or artichokes.
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| photo by Ann Tanner |
The Veiled Nun is an 1860 marble bust depicting a female figure. Despite the name, the woman depicted is not a nun. Sculpted by Italian artist Giuseppe Croff, it is considered one of the artist's greatest works. The bust was popular with visitors to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. from 1874 until the museum closed in 2014. The bust is now displayed in the National Gallery of Art.Here is a further description of the work.
The Veiled Nun is a 20.75 in (52.7 cm) tall marble bust depicting a female figure wearing a veil.[1][2][3] The fine details give the illusion of the veil being opaque and transparent.[4] Because of the woman's stylish coiffure and embroidered veil, she is not a nun, but rather a woman of means or an allegorical figure.[2][3][4] According to photographer David Finn and art historian Susan Joy Slack, "the mysterious nature of the work, its inward focus, and the relative 'foreignness' of veiled figures to American museumgoers caused early visitors to refer to her as a nun, and the appellation has remained."[4] The bust has been described as a "fine example of a detailed rendering of texture and form", a "tour de force of carving" and "carved to make stone look like silk".It is really one of the most remarkable things we have seen in the museums in Washington, D.C. By the way, the photo was made by my wife, Ann Tanner.
The Inverted Jenny (also known as an Upside Down Jenny, Jenny Invert) is a United States postage stamp first issued on May 10, 1918 in which the image of the Curtiss JN-4 airplane in the center of the design is printed upside-down; it is probably the most famous error in American philately. Only one pane of 100 of the invert stamps was ever found, making this error one of the most prized in all philately.
A single Inverted Jenny was sold at a Robert A. Siegel auction in November 2007 for $977,500. In December 2007 a mint never hinged example was sold for $825,000. The broker of the sale said the buyer was a Wall Street executive who had lost the auction the previous month. A block of four inverted Jennys was sold at a Robert A. Siegel auction in October 2005 for $2.7 million. In the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, prices fetched by Inverted Jennys have receded. Between January and September 2014, five examples offered at auction sold for sums ranging from $126,000 through $575,100. Prices eventually recovered, for on May 31, 2016, a particularly well-centered Jenny invert, graded XF-superb 95 by Professional Stamp Experts, was sold at a Siegel Auction for a hammer price of $1,175,000 The addition of a 15% buyer’s premium raised the total record high price paid for this copy to $1,351,250.I have been involved in stamps since I was eight years old but never at this level.
Pilot Fred Wiseman carried letters from the mayor and postmaster of Petaluma, California, to their counterparts in Santa Rosa. Mechanical difficulties slowed the journey. The trip took two days to complete. The plane's top speed never exceeded 70 mph.
Wiseman took off from Kenilworth Park in Petaluma, California, at 12:30 p.m. on February 17, 1911. He was headed for Santa Rosa, California, a mere 14 miles away by air. In his lap, Wiseman carried three letters, including letters from the Mayor and Postmaster of Petaluma to their counterparts in Santa Rosa, and copies of the local newspaper, the Press-Democrat. Wiseman was able to get his plane up to 100 feet in the air and traveled smoothly for the first four miles. But four and one-half miles out, the engine started to quit. Wiseman was forced to land in a muddy field, breaking one of the planes skids as he landed.
The crew repaired the plane, and covered it with a canvas tarp. The next morning, the tarp was laid out on the muddy field, and used as Wiseman's runway. The plane managed to make the rest of the trip that day, securing Wiseman's place in history as the first plane to carry airmail. A second airmail trip was made the day that Wiseman landed. In India on February 18, 1911, Henri Pequet flew mail a distance of five miles from Allahabad to Naini.
Breezing Up, Homer's iconic painting of a father and three boys out for a spirited sail, received wide praise. The New York Tribune wrote, "There is no picture in this exhibition, nor can we remember when there has been a picture in any exhibition, that can be named alongside this."
The Smithsonian’s two monumental Easter Island stone figures, or moai, represent some of the most popular and intriguing exhibits at the National Museum of Natural History. Since their arrival in 1887, one or both has always been on exhibit. Exceedingly rare, the statues—one a complete statue, the other a head—remain today the only such figures in a public museum in the United States.
These distinctive stone figures are a quintessential feature of Easter Island, or Rapa Nui. Most of them were made between the years 1100 and 1680, and are carved primarily out of volcanic tuff (solidified ash) from the extinct volcano, Rano Raraku. To date, a total of 887 are known to have been made, though many never made it out of the volcanic quarry. Each statue likely represented the deceased head of a lineage, and many were positioned on stone temple platforms facing inland to keep watch over their respective communities.
These icons of the Pacific have been well known to outsiders since the time of Captain Cook’s visit in 1774. The British collected a very significant statue, known as Hoa Hakananai’a, in 1868, the first statue to be removed from the island. A few years later, Britain’s great rival, the French, also came and carried away a stone figure. Both figures have always been prominently displayed, and are today at the British Museum in London and the Musée du quai Branly in Paris.
The National Museum of Natural History has had a long and involved research program centered on the Olmec culture in southern Mexico. Outside the museum you will see an exact 1.78m (5.84 ft) tall carved stone replica of Colossal Head #4. This sculpture was created by Ignacio Pérez Solano. He carved the 6 ton head out of volcanic stone, and faithfully replicated the original head carved by the Olmec about 3000 years ago. This replica was a gift to the Smithsonian from Miguel Alemán Velazco, then governor of the state of Veracruz, Mexico. In 1946, Smithsonian archaeologist Matthew W. Stirling excavated the original head, named "San Lorenzo Colossal head #4" after the town near which it was discovered. Now on display at the Museum of Anthropology in Xalapa, Veracruz, it was lent to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in 1978 for the “Treasures of Mexico”exhibit. During its exhibition here it was displayed on the mall steps, where either the banded iron or the fossil wood can presently be seen.
Cryptothecia rubrocincta is a species of lichen in the Arthoniaceae family of fungi. The species is distributed in subtropical and tropical locations throughout the southeastern United States, as well as Central and South America, and has been collected infrequently in a few locales in Africa. The body of the lichen forms continuous, circular crust-like patches on dead wood, readily recognizable by the prominent red pigment. The older, central region is covered with red, spherical to cylindrical granules. Moving outwards from the center, zones of color may be distinguished, the first gray-green, the second white, and finally a bright red cottony rim. The red and green colors of this unmistakable woodland lichen give the appearance of a Christmas wreath, suggestive of its common North American name, the Christmas wreath lichen. The red pigment, called chiodectonic acid is one of several chemicals the lichen produces to help tolerate inhospitable growing conditions.
The Potomac River (/pəˈtoʊmək/ (We live a lot closer to the Severn River and near the Spa Creek.listen)) is located within the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States and flows from the Potomac Highlands into the Chesapeake Bay. The river (main stem and North Branch) is approximately 405 miles (652 km) long, with a drainage area of about 14,700 square miles (38,000 km2). In terms of area, this makes the Potomac River the fourth largest river along the Atlantic coast of the United States and the 21st largest in the United States. Over 5 million people live within the Potomac watershed.
