Word: bolt
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...this oft-told tale another Founders myth, like Washington's confessing to axing his father's cherry tree? The latest skepticism is voiced in a quirky new book, Bolt of Fate (Public Affairs), that calls the whole thing a hoax, echoing the spoofs Franklin confected for Poor Richard's Almanack. But author Tom Tucker's evidence is slim. He makes much of the improbability of flying a kite weighted down by a heavy key, ignoring Franklin's long history of kite flying, and of his delay in publicizing the experiment, though only three months elapsed. More to the point, scientific...
Franklin wasn't the first to propose a kinship between harmless sparks and a lightning bolt. But he was the first to suggest an experiment to prove it. The Royal Society of London published his proposal, yet it was the French who actually put it to the test. The experiment Franklin proposed, which he first revealed in a letter to his English agent in July 1750, called for installing on a high place, like a steeple, a sentry box with a metal pole extending from its roof. If an electrified storm cloud passed overhead, Franklin said, the pole--preferably sharpened...
Somewhere, there's a lesson in that for Europe's leaders. Meanwhile, a note to Real's marketing department: Ali Abbas needs a new shirt. --With reporting by Kristen Bolt...
...With reporting by Kristen Bolt...
...wonderful triple play here, cloud-filled skies sweeping over broad plains painted by three generations: Ruisdael's pastoral View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds, Georges Michel's barren and stormy Three Windmills and Van Gogh's powerhouse Wheatfield under Thunderclouds, a swath of chartreuse and emerald green beneath a bolt of cobalt and pale blue. Millet was second only to Rembrandt in Van Gogh's pantheon, and he copied the older artist's works throughout his short life, working from prints or from memory, especially the iconic figure of the Sower. In 1889, he wrote to his brother Theo that...