Most mysterious goings on in south Edinburgh. I've seen plenty of unknown substances on lampposts but never have they triggered fire engines and police cars.
Rebekah Higgitt@rhiggitt.bsky.social · 16h agoSeems to have been a false alarm
Rebekah Higgitt
@rhiggitt.bsky.social
Historian of science; Principal Curator of Science @ntlmuseumsscot.bsky.social & Hon Fellow, STIS, Uni of Edinburgh. VP @bshsnews.bsky.social #histSTM. Views own. Formerly known as @beckyfh https://teleskopos.wordpress.com/profile
Rebekah Higgitt@rhiggitt.bsky.social · 16h agoThe rain deluge in central Edinburgh evidently missed the Botanics weather station: www2.sepa.org.uk/rainfall/. I'd love to know what it was over the National Museum of Scotland to compare with the "half-an-inch of rain over half-an-hour" that the Evening Dispatch reported there on 15 July 1907.
Scottish Rainfall Data - provided by Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA)
Rainfall data for Scotland.
www2.sepa.org.uk
Fabulous image from the @sciencemuseum.org.uk random catalogue picker! Even better, the parts have been photographed but not the main object collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co45.... Gotta love science & technology museum collections 😀 📜
REMINDER: the deadline for proposals is 4 September. We have some additional guidelines added to the call below: teleskopos.wordpress.com/wp-content/u... #histSTM #envhist
Rebekah Higgitt@rhiggitt.bsky.social · 7mo agoCall for Contributions to a Sourcebook for Histories of Weather & Weathering teleskopos.wordpress.com/2026/02/05/c... Full details linked and here teleskopos.wordpress.com/wp-content/u... It will be edited by me, @lottaleiwo.bsky.social and Tamara Culkins. Please share! #histSTM #envhist 🗃️📜
Today is the 180th anniversary of Elsie Inglis's birth. She obtained the Triple Qualification in medicine in 1892, founded a maternity hospital in Edinburgh, spoke at suffrage events organized by Milicent Fawcett, and during WWI created the Scottish Women's Hospitals. #WomenInSTEM #MedSky ⚕️
Genuinely chuffed to discover my book is being stocked by Waterstones and Foyles! Preorder now - only £43 and released 8th December: www.waterstones.com/book/the-tra... or www.foyles.co.uk/book/the-tra...
Includes scholars at IROs as well as HEIs *puts on thinking cap*
Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · last wk.If you're a UK-based academic in Arts, Humanities or Social Sciences and keen to acquire/develop a new skill over 6-12 months, this scheme may be for you. Maximum value £10,000.
Raw time-lapse of yesterday’s eclipse from Yorkshire via our Seestar S50. Needs work
Well, we had a good view about 15 minutes before maximum and 5 minutes after - not too bad! A shame there was such a dark cloud over in between, as you couldn't really tell how much dimming was due to cloud and how much to eclipse. I hope everyone had a good time with specs, pinholes and colanders!
Rebekah Higgitt@rhiggitt.bsky.social · last wk.Darn it!
It's warm for Edinburgh this evening, but too much cloud in the sky. Fingers crossed, though I wonder where and how far I'd need to travel to guarantee a view of the eclipse.
Parents! Carers! Anyone looking after children! If you want to view the solar eclipse later today but haven’t got proper, safe viewing glasses, you could make one of these:
Three Ways to Make a Solar Eclipse Viewer
Safely view a solar eclipse by making and using a pinhole solar eclipse viewer.
letstalkscience.ca
I really thought this year would be the one that I'd be organised enough to travel to see a total eclipse, but circumstances... Now looking ahead! www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/list...
Solar and Lunar Eclipses in Europe – Next 10 Years
List of where the next solar or lunar eclipse is visible. Check if you can see it in your city.
timeanddate.com
60 Years ago today, the first Lunar Orbiter launched on a mission to photograph the Moon in preparation for Apollo. For the occasion, I wrote a history of the camera, originally built by Eastman Kodak for a classified Air Force program. #otd #HistSTM 🗃️🔭 invertingvision.com/2026/08/10/k...
Kodak’s “Pre-Invented” Lunar Orbiter Camera; or, The Fate of SAMOS Readout
Left: The Lunar Orbiter camera system sitting in the bottom half of the pressurized shell. Project Manager Cliff Nelson (left) stands with NASA/Langley team members Calvin Broome, Israel Taback, an…
invertingvision.com
$12.47 for an ebook right now or you can use the discount code McCa6648 for 50% off the physical book #histsci #histSTM #envhist #Antarctica
Berghahn Books@berghahnbooks.bsky.social · 2w agoAntarctic Materialities, edited by Daniella McCahey @farsouthhistory.bsky.social and Maria Ximena Senatore has now been published! Find out more here: bit.ly/4fLeijY #Archaeology #EnvironmentalStudies #CulturalStudies
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... Some lovely song, reflection, geology and Deep Time at Siccar Point with Karine Polwart on BBC Radio 4 tonight.
Illuminated - James Hutton and The Restless Earth - BBC Sounds
Plunge into the abyss of deep geological time with Karine Polwart.
bbc.co.uk
📘From our latest issue! Keir Waddington @keirwaddington.bsky.social (Cardiff University) on 'Living with Drought in the Long Nineteenth Century' #Water #Environment #Climate #Rural #Weather 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
![The 1893 drought will, according to the science journal Nature in July, ‘unquestionably take its place among the recorded events of history, if regard be had to its intensity [and] the length of time during which it has lasted’. Communities reported being stretched beyond endurance. Rivers ran dry, reservoirs dropped to record lows, wells failed, and domestic water supplies were restricted to a few hours per day. But while the 1893 drought was severe, it was not unusual. As this article reveals, urban and rural communities faced regular droughts of varying intensity and duration during the long nineteenth century. What did this mean for them? Where previous interest in extreme weather events has focused on recovering historic patterns, or examined resilience or adaption, this article explores the lived experiences of drought to offer a new perspective on the impact of weather shocks and water scarcity on people’s lives. By combining evidence from meteorological reports, newspapers, official reports, and local government archives, the article undercovers the fragility of urban and rural water supplies and examines how behaviours were adapted in response to water scarcity and precarity.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:mvpup65ek2edpkpehxkb7mng/bafkreibwxt4p74hrfvn6jfhajqbew2xpthsyfdla5ynq5uhtcgthg4xccu)
Was this ever in doubt? However, you do usually need to follow it with a comma.
Merriam-Webster@merriam-webster.com · 2w agoJane Austen used 'however' at the beginning of a sentence, and so can you.
I missed this when it first came out but it's terrific - insightful, helpful - and even if you read it before, it's worth reading again now, esp in light of new arguments emerging that AI technology and R&D should transform into a kind of public utility, not guided entirely by commercial interests.
Ted Underwood@tedunderwood.com · 10mo agoWrote a short piece arguing that higher ed must help steer AI. TLDR: If we outsource this to tech, we outsource our whole business. But rejectionism is basically stalling. If we want to survive, schools themselves must proactively shape AI for education & research. [1/6, unpaywalled at 5/6] +
#histSTM thread
Ceryl@politicdormouse.bsky.social · 2w agoDorothéa Klumpke US astronomer. 1893 PhD on rings of Saturn @ Uni Paris. 1886 Director Bureau of Measurements @ Paris Observatory Carte du Ciel project. Worked w husband to photograph 52 Herschel areas of nebulosity. Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur b #OTD 9 Aug 1861 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothe...
If someone with a spare £6.5 million plus could buy this and set up a writing retreat exclusively for historians of science, technology and medicine, I'd be very grateful.
Dr Vanessa@hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 3w agoI haven't been doing #HouseGawp while on holiday but now I'm back so how about a whole island? www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/9...
Yup. Closing in the first place was essential, when there was no vaccine, no clear understanding of transmission, and many parents were already taking their children out of school.
Dr Zubaida Haque@zubhaque.bsky.social · 3w agoWe need to separate two distinct failures: 1/Schools stayed closed longer than they needed to bec the govt failed to put in strong mitigation measures to make them safe 2/Johnson failed to invest properly in helping children recover – a failure that led Sir Kevan Collins to resign as “catch‑up tsar”
The Doomsday Clock and @bshsnews.bsky.social are the same age; both will be 80 next year. I hope they'll both see many happy returns yet! #histSTM
Alex Wellerstein@wellerstein.bsky.social · 3w agoI have not had much time to write this week (because I’ve been writing something else, which will come out in a couple weeks...), but I did manage to get down some ideas for DOOMSDAY MACHINES on an intrusive thought of mine: What's the opposite of the Doomsday Clock?
🎶"Every day we live in hope/ They won't take away our telescope" 🎶🎵 Catchy! Here's the 2026 petition: c.org/JcXNpc4NFg #savejodrellbank
Tim O'Brien@proftimob.bsky.social · 4w agoBeen a very hectic and devastating day. Many thanks for the very many lovely messages of support for our work. Here's a flash back to 2008 #savejodrellbank youtu.be/cWWbA4OYG3Y?...
This is just to say I have OCRed the text thet was in tne arch:ve and whicb yov were prabaldy seamhing for "breahtast" Fargme ms fheg mem debo:w5 sb ?mccf mmb 5c oc1b
Can anyone recommend a cookery book to give a 19yo (m) who doesn't have a huge amount of cooking experience?