You're not hot but you sure look like your dog.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Two hot Chemists walk into a bar...
Some time ago I received an email from my friend, Joanna. She's getting her PhD in History and Sociology of Science (specializing in cold storage in the creation of bio banks.) (!) So along with many interesting facts and figures, she's come across some Historical Hot Guys in her studies. (Mostly Scientists, I think.)
Her note went a little something like this:
Look...he's all pensive and shit. In this painting he looks ever so slightly mischievous too. Kinda like he's thinking about blowing something up. (And in fact, as a young man, he was dismissed as an apothecary apprentice when his idle experiments led to explosions of varying degrees. He humbly said later, "The most important of my discoveries has been suggested to me by my failures." That's a nice way of dressing up "creating small fires")
He was born in England in 1778. He had a talent for science at any early age. As a young man, his first area of interest was "investigating the medical powers of factitious airs and gases." His favorite? Nitrous oxide. While he didn't discover it, he sure "experimented" with it quite a bit. (And by "experimented" I mean he was "addicted.") I wish I could say he paved the way for the use of "laughing gas" as an anesthetic...but he didn't. But I hear he had some raging parties. (He did note in Researches, Chemical and Philosophical [1800] the "analgesic effect of nitrous oxide and its potential to be used for surgical operations." But that didn't happen until well after his death. 'Doh!)
In 1801, he took a post at The Royal Institution in London, where he found his true love. Electrolysis. Yup, we think of it solely as a hair removal process now...but actually it's "a method of using a direct electric current to drive an otherwise non-spontaneous chemical reaction." With that, the guy discovered:
sodium
potassium
calcium
magnesium
strontium
boron
barium
It's not just the label on a Centrum bottle...that's his resume!
He also dubbed dephlogisticated marine acid "chlorine" (It's much catchier, no?) AND he helped some other scientists flesh out "iodine."
His lectures were quite popular and naturally "the young and handsome Davy acquired a huge female following around London." (Thus, the "hottest Chemist of the Romantic era" stuff.) And if all THAT wasn't enough, he composed poetry, invented a miner's lamp and wrote a book about fly-fishing.
And if you're still not impressed, he was the FIRST SUBJECT EVER of a clerihew. Madness, you say! (I didn't know what it was either.) Edmund Clerihew Bentley wrote:
Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.
Oh and there's a lunar crater named after him.
There was a slight mishap in Sir Davy's laboratory in his later years. He screwed up his eyesight when an experiment with nitrogen trichloride went a little sideways. This accident led him to take on an assistant...a Hot Guy by the name of Michael Faraday.
Granted, he doesn't have the same "zing" in his eyes but I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers. Or in his case, electrifying crackers.
Her note went a little something like this:
"You should do something on Humphry Davy! He was apparently the hottest chemist of the entire romantic era -- or maybe even evah!"
Done! And this is a special TWO FOR ONE DEAL since Sir Davy had a incredibly fine lab partner. But let's not get ahead of ourselves...
Behold! Sir Humphry Davy: Chemist, Lecturer, Poet, Physicist, Hot Guy!
Seriously? He's so dreamy, it's a little ridiculous. Even in black and white! Let's see another...this time in color...
Look...he's all pensive and shit. In this painting he looks ever so slightly mischievous too. Kinda like he's thinking about blowing something up. (And in fact, as a young man, he was dismissed as an apothecary apprentice when his idle experiments led to explosions of varying degrees. He humbly said later, "The most important of my discoveries has been suggested to me by my failures." That's a nice way of dressing up "creating small fires")
He was born in England in 1778. He had a talent for science at any early age. As a young man, his first area of interest was "investigating the medical powers of factitious airs and gases." His favorite? Nitrous oxide. While he didn't discover it, he sure "experimented" with it quite a bit. (And by "experimented" I mean he was "addicted.") I wish I could say he paved the way for the use of "laughing gas" as an anesthetic...but he didn't. But I hear he had some raging parties. (He did note in Researches, Chemical and Philosophical [1800] the "analgesic effect of nitrous oxide and its potential to be used for surgical operations." But that didn't happen until well after his death. 'Doh!)
In 1801, he took a post at The Royal Institution in London, where he found his true love. Electrolysis. Yup, we think of it solely as a hair removal process now...but actually it's "a method of using a direct electric current to drive an otherwise non-spontaneous chemical reaction." With that, the guy discovered:
sodium
potassium
calcium
magnesium
strontium
boron
barium
It's not just the label on a Centrum bottle...that's his resume!
He also dubbed dephlogisticated marine acid "chlorine" (It's much catchier, no?) AND he helped some other scientists flesh out "iodine."
His lectures were quite popular and naturally "the young and handsome Davy acquired a huge female following around London." (Thus, the "hottest Chemist of the Romantic era" stuff.) And if all THAT wasn't enough, he composed poetry, invented a miner's lamp and wrote a book about fly-fishing.
And if you're still not impressed, he was the FIRST SUBJECT EVER of a clerihew. Madness, you say! (I didn't know what it was either.) Edmund Clerihew Bentley wrote:
Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.
Oh and there's a lunar crater named after him.
There was a slight mishap in Sir Davy's laboratory in his later years. He screwed up his eyesight when an experiment with nitrogen trichloride went a little sideways. This accident led him to take on an assistant...a Hot Guy by the name of Michael Faraday.
Granted, he doesn't have the same "zing" in his eyes but I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers. Or in his case, electrifying crackers.
He built on Davy's work. He discovered "electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and laws of electrolysis." As a Chemist he discovered benzene (too bad it causes leukemia) and invented an early form of a Bunsen burner. (Apparently, Albert Einstein kept a picture of the ol' boy on the wall of his study. Score, Faraday!)
The two men were buddy-buddy for many years until Mike "went on to enhance Davy's work and in the end he became the more famous and influential scientist – to the extent that Davy is supposed to have claimed Faraday as his greatest discovery. However, Davy later accused Faraday of plagiarism, causing Faraday...to cease all research in electromagnetism until his mentor's death."
Man. Ain't that always the way? Boys will be boys, I suppose.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Dear John
Holy crap. I literally have a stack of Historical Hot Guys to spotlight. How did THAT happen? Well, I'll tell ya: Hard work, luck and the kindness of friends. :)
Migrant Mother, 1936.
With all due respect this isn't about you, Ms. Lange.
It's about John Collier, Jr.
.
What up, salty dawg?
I literally couldn't find any pictures of the young Collier online...so I hopscotched over some pesky copyright laws and scanned this pic right out of the book. Frankly, I think I'm doing the world a favor. This will be my exhibit A for my defense in court:
I think it's a slam dunk defense.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah.
(If I'm going to jail I might as well make it count. I hope you appreciate it, Interwebs!)
John Collier, Jr. was born in 1913 and his dad, John Collier, was a social activist who later served as the Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1945. Sounds like John Jr. had a pretty cool and artistic upbringing. According to americanimage.unm.edu:
When Collier was twelve, he was apprenticed to Maynard Dixon, a well-known painter, to afford him opportunities outside of formal schooling. Dixon 's wife, Dorothea Lange, exposed him to photography.
Speaking of cool...
At the age of 16, Collier sailed as a yeoman on a four-mast sailing ship to Europe, contributing to his disciplined work habits and his lifelong love of the sea.
I'm guessing that's where this picture was taken. (I'm hoping he's 18 in that pic...or else I'm creepy and shit.) The fact remains...he is very handsome. And the image is wonderful. And I like his hair.
Also, he was talented photographer himself. He has a Flickr!!! Not too shabby for a dead guy. (I kid!) According to Marjorie Young, he was "best known for his documentary photographs of home interiors and the details they revealed about their occupants' lives." I highly recommend poking around his Flickr. Interesting stuff.
I've had this one in the hopper for quite some time. I was flipping through the book Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits. I wasn't familiar with her name but I was surprised to learn that I was familiar with her photographs. She took this:
Migrant Mother, 1936.
With all due respect this isn't about you, Ms. Lange.
It's about John Collier, Jr.
.
What up, salty dawg?
I literally couldn't find any pictures of the young Collier online...so I hopscotched over some pesky copyright laws and scanned this pic right out of the book. Frankly, I think I'm doing the world a favor. This will be my exhibit A for my defense in court:
I think it's a slam dunk defense.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah.
(If I'm going to jail I might as well make it count. I hope you appreciate it, Interwebs!)
John Collier, Jr. was born in 1913 and his dad, John Collier, was a social activist who later served as the Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1945. Sounds like John Jr. had a pretty cool and artistic upbringing. According to americanimage.unm.edu:
When Collier was twelve, he was apprenticed to Maynard Dixon, a well-known painter, to afford him opportunities outside of formal schooling. Dixon 's wife, Dorothea Lange, exposed him to photography.
Speaking of cool...
At the age of 16, Collier sailed as a yeoman on a four-mast sailing ship to Europe, contributing to his disciplined work habits and his lifelong love of the sea.
I'm guessing that's where this picture was taken. (I'm hoping he's 18 in that pic...or else I'm creepy and shit.) The fact remains...he is very handsome. And the image is wonderful. And I like his hair.
Also, he was talented photographer himself. He has a Flickr!!! Not too shabby for a dead guy. (I kid!) According to Marjorie Young, he was "best known for his documentary photographs of home interiors and the details they revealed about their occupants' lives." I highly recommend poking around his Flickr. Interesting stuff.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
The Scarlet Author
Nathaniel Hawthorne. Who knew?
I don't usually go for blue eyes but okay.
I found out some interesting things about the ol' boy too:
"William Hathorne, the author's great-great-great-grandfather, a Puritan, was the first of the family to emigrate from England, first settling in Dorchester, Massachusetts before moving to Salem. There he became an important member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and held many political positions including magistrate and judge, becoming infamous for his harsh sentencing."
"William's son and the author's great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne, was one of the judges who oversaw the Salem Witch Trials. Having learned about this, the author may have added the "w" to his surname in his early twenties, shortly after graduating from college, in an effort to dissociate himself from his notorious forebears."
I think my favorite part of the Wikipedia article was learning about his kids. I'm mildly obsessed with the offspring of famous figures. And so we have Nate's fam...
He married transcendentalist painter and illustrator Sophia Peabody in 1842 and they had three children. Una, Julian and Rose (she was canonized [!]).I found this bit of information about Julian's birth particularly interesting. If Nate was excited to have a son he certainly camouflaged it well. From a letter he wrote to his sister:
A small troglodyte made his appearance here at ten minutes to six o'clock, this morning, who claims to be your nephew, and the heir of all our wealth and honors. He has dark hair and is no great beauty at present, but is said to be a particularly fine little urchin by everybody who has seen him.
Ouch. Thanks, dad.
I'm fairly certain Julian had a "nontraditional" upbringing. Consider this:
His parents had difficulty choosing a name for eight months. Possible names included George, Arthur, Edward, Horace, Robert, and Lemuel. His father referred to him for some time as "Bundlebreech" or "Black Prince", due to his dark curls and red cheeks.
I hope that "Black Prince" shit didn't go to his head and make him a devil worshipper.
Ah here's lil' Bundlebreech and Una now...
What? You'd look pissed too if your parents almost named you Lemuel.
I don't usually go for blue eyes but okay.
I found out some interesting things about the ol' boy too:
"William Hathorne, the author's great-great-great-grandfather, a Puritan, was the first of the family to emigrate from England, first settling in Dorchester, Massachusetts before moving to Salem. There he became an important member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and held many political positions including magistrate and judge, becoming infamous for his harsh sentencing."
"William's son and the author's great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne, was one of the judges who oversaw the Salem Witch Trials. Having learned about this, the author may have added the "w" to his surname in his early twenties, shortly after graduating from college, in an effort to dissociate himself from his notorious forebears."
I think my favorite part of the Wikipedia article was learning about his kids. I'm mildly obsessed with the offspring of famous figures. And so we have Nate's fam...
He married transcendentalist painter and illustrator Sophia Peabody in 1842 and they had three children. Una, Julian and Rose (she was canonized [!]).I found this bit of information about Julian's birth particularly interesting. If Nate was excited to have a son he certainly camouflaged it well. From a letter he wrote to his sister:
A small troglodyte made his appearance here at ten minutes to six o'clock, this morning, who claims to be your nephew, and the heir of all our wealth and honors. He has dark hair and is no great beauty at present, but is said to be a particularly fine little urchin by everybody who has seen him.
Ouch. Thanks, dad.
I'm fairly certain Julian had a "nontraditional" upbringing. Consider this:
His parents had difficulty choosing a name for eight months. Possible names included George, Arthur, Edward, Horace, Robert, and Lemuel. His father referred to him for some time as "Bundlebreech" or "Black Prince", due to his dark curls and red cheeks.
I hope that "Black Prince" shit didn't go to his head and make him a devil worshipper.
Ah here's lil' Bundlebreech and Una now...
What? You'd look pissed too if your parents almost named you Lemuel.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
A Tale of Two Johns
His name? John Hamilton Reynolds. He was an English poet, satirist, critic, and playwright.
WOW! Hello hot stuff. Dreamy hair. Warm, thoughtful eyes. Snappy dresser. (Hello!? Cravat!) Nice mouth. Deathly pale pallor. Just lovely.
This is literally the only picture that I could find of him. It was the same one with every single search. Is he obscure? Eh. A little, maybe. But not any more obscure than any other second tier poet of that era.The main problem here is...he was friends with someone named...
John Keats. (Who, incidentally, is NOT a Historical Hot Guy.)
They were all BFF and shit. (Reynolds MUST have been the Wingman.) There is lots of correspondence between the two that has survived. Keats even wrote a poem about him called (duh) "To John Hamilton Reynolds." Here's a piece...
O that a week could be an age, and we
Felt parting and warm meeting every week,
Then one poor year a thousand years would be,
The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:
So could we live long life in little space,
So time itself would be annihilate,
So a day's journey in oblivious haze
To serve our joys would
lengthen and dilate.
Remember when guys could write stuff like that about each other and no one called anyone a "homo?"
Anyway, Hamilton started out working in an insurance office, (Get this. It was called: "The Amicable Society for Perpetual Assurance." That rules so hard.) but he grew restless and started writing. He got some stuff published and wouldn't ya know it...the ol' boy got some fans. Lord Byron. Wordsworth. Keats. (You know. The gang.) The problem was...critics kept saying J. Ham was a bit of a hack. ("Despite the fact that Reynolds had a habit of imitating either Lord Byron or William Wordsworth and many critics noted this lack of originality...")
So always the bridesmaid, never the bride. You get the idea. It's kind of a tough crowd to hang around with. Poor guy never had a chance.
Yadda yadda yadda, he did a bunch of stuff in his life. He became a lawyer. Got married. Wrote an opera. Was an Editor at London Magazine. Published some books of poetry. And died a bankrupt alcoholic. And the final indignity...here's his tombstone on the Isle of Wight:
If you can't make out that inscription:
IN MEMORY OF JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS
who died
November 15th 1852
Aged 58 Years.
THE FRIEND OF KEATS
Their caps, not mine. Talk about kicking a guy when he's down. Damn. Dude couldn't even get his own tombstone without the mention of you-know-who.
It's cool, baby. You may not have been the better writer but you were definitely hotter and really...that's all that matters.
WOW! Hello hot stuff. Dreamy hair. Warm, thoughtful eyes. Snappy dresser. (Hello!? Cravat!) Nice mouth. Deathly pale pallor. Just lovely.
This is literally the only picture that I could find of him. It was the same one with every single search. Is he obscure? Eh. A little, maybe. But not any more obscure than any other second tier poet of that era.The main problem here is...he was friends with someone named...
John Keats. (Who, incidentally, is NOT a Historical Hot Guy.)
They were all BFF and shit. (Reynolds MUST have been the Wingman.) There is lots of correspondence between the two that has survived. Keats even wrote a poem about him called (duh) "To John Hamilton Reynolds." Here's a piece...
O that a week could be an age, and we
Felt parting and warm meeting every week,
Then one poor year a thousand years would be,
The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:
So could we live long life in little space,
So time itself would be annihilate,
So a day's journey in oblivious haze
To serve our joys would
lengthen and dilate.
Remember when guys could write stuff like that about each other and no one called anyone a "homo?"
Anyway, Hamilton started out working in an insurance office, (Get this. It was called: "The Amicable Society for Perpetual Assurance." That rules so hard.) but he grew restless and started writing. He got some stuff published and wouldn't ya know it...the ol' boy got some fans. Lord Byron. Wordsworth. Keats. (You know. The gang.) The problem was...critics kept saying J. Ham was a bit of a hack. ("Despite the fact that Reynolds had a habit of imitating either Lord Byron or William Wordsworth and many critics noted this lack of originality...")
So always the bridesmaid, never the bride. You get the idea. It's kind of a tough crowd to hang around with. Poor guy never had a chance.
Yadda yadda yadda, he did a bunch of stuff in his life. He became a lawyer. Got married. Wrote an opera. Was an Editor at London Magazine. Published some books of poetry. And died a bankrupt alcoholic. And the final indignity...here's his tombstone on the Isle of Wight:
If you can't make out that inscription:
IN MEMORY OF JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS
who died
November 15th 1852
Aged 58 Years.
THE FRIEND OF KEATS
Their caps, not mine. Talk about kicking a guy when he's down. Damn. Dude couldn't even get his own tombstone without the mention of you-know-who.
It's cool, baby. You may not have been the better writer but you were definitely hotter and really...that's all that matters.
Monday, November 1, 2010
French Toast
According to the biography Madame de Pompadour: Mistress of France by Christine Pevitt Algrant Louis XV was supposedly the "handsomest man in France." She then cited this painting of the ol' boy...
Hm. Not too shabby. Something about those French-y eyes. That Gallic nose. And is that a dimple I see? Okay. Sure. I'll take it. I'm a sucker for brown eyes. AND powdered wigs!
Hm. Not too shabby. Something about those French-y eyes. That Gallic nose. And is that a dimple I see? Okay. Sure. I'll take it. I'm a sucker for brown eyes. AND powdered wigs!
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Hot Speed
Came across a book about ol' Abe Lincoln today called Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Guess what? His BFF Joshua Fry Speed...is...well...see for yourself...
Yup. Historical hot guy.
Dreamy eyes...and a bottom lip I'd sell my soul for...
There are rumors that he and the Prez were more than friends...ahem. But...definitive proof has yet to be uncovered. (Well, duh.)
Yup. Historical hot guy.
Dreamy eyes...and a bottom lip I'd sell my soul for...
There are rumors that he and the Prez were more than friends...ahem. But...definitive proof has yet to be uncovered. (Well, duh.)
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