Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale (1871*-1945) died just over 65 years ago, yet her artwork remains popular today. Take a look at her paintings, and you’ll see why she was the exception among female artists in her day: successful and praised by critics and fellow artists. As artist G.F. Watts declared: “I feel inclined to throw away my palette and brushes. What are my things by the side of such stuff as hers?”

1. Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale demonstrated an early skill for drawing, studying first under the art critic John Ruskin and then entering the Crystal Palace School of Art at age 17. Yet it took her three tries before she was accepted to the Royal Academy, perhaps due in part to that school’s reluctance to admit females, even though they had been allowed since 1860. Her first year* at the Academy, Brickdale won £40 for her mural design in an exhibition.

2. Due to a friendship with the aviator Charles Rolls (co-founder of Rolls-Royce and the first Briton to be killed in a flying accident), Brickdale had a keen interest in “aeroplane technology.” This interest is on display in her 1920 painting “The Forerunner,” which shows Leonardo da Vinci demonstrating his model flying machine to Ludovico Sforza and Beatrice d’Este, the Duke and Duchess of Milan. In the painting, the only member of the audience who exhibits any interest in the machine is the duke’s son, Cesare.
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We had a lot of fun giving away daily neatorama prizes this month! We hope you enjoyed the new aspect of the game. We’re taking all your feedback into consideration for the next hunt, so thanks for being active on the Facebook page. Head over there to find out if you’re a random winner, as we’ll be pulling that later today. Meantime, congrats to our first place winner, you remember him from the beginning of the summer, yes, it’s Jimmy Luth again! Let’s RE-meet him now:

Even though I had hoped for wrong answers for Sean (Sorry man) I was sure I was out of the running with the facebook post. Now I am part of the even more exclusive two time winners of HDYK! (Has there ever been a three time champion?). I told all my info on my last bio but I am still married (Thanks to Laurie for dialing the phone as I called out numbers), still with two daughters (Annabelle, 4, pictured 400 feet above Downtown Disney), still an Analyst, and still a trivia nut. As for the puzzles..I spent entirely too much time on a Friday night for Day 4′s line puzzles no doubt missing the answer several times as I twisted and turned the pictures in MS Paint. Seriously Josh, do these come to you in your dreams for you to make them our nightmare? I needed no assistance to the palindrome as that was one my Dad taught me many years ago and for some reason sticks with me. As always, thanks to the facebook fans that appear each month with hints and game chat.

Thanks again David and Josh!

Final Answer

A man, a plan, a canal, panama

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While there’s some debate as to whether there were eight or nine original stars on Beverly Hills 90210, there’s no question that some of the actors weren’t even close to the age of the characters they played. Suspension of disbelief is a glorious thing, and part of the reason the series did so well.

Since Thursday is 9-02-10 (September 2, 2010), let’s see how well you know the real names of the stars from the first season.

Take the Quiz: Name the Original 90210 Stars

Sadly, today is the anniversary of the day Princess Diana died 13 years ago. To commemorate yet offset the somber occasion, here are a few lighthearted facts about the girl who was just shy Diana Frances Spencer before she was ever Her Royal Highness, Princess of Wales.

1. Before she became Princess of Wales, Diana was just an assistant at a nursery school.

2. She had her heart set on being a ballerina with the Royal Ballet. When her height topped out at 5’10”, however, she was declared too tall to make it to the professional heights she wanted to reach.

3. Her older sister, Sarah (pictured there with Diana), was involved with Prince Charles before she was. The relationship is said to have ended when she blabbed some details to the press and then proudly showed Charles the resulting newspaper clipping. Charles chastised her and turned his attentions to Diana shortly thereafter.

4. Now that was a wedding dress. You’ve probably seen pictures of the unbelievable train – 25 feet of ivory silk taffeta and antique lace, to be exact. The dress also had 10,000 pearls hand-sewn onto it. (more…)

When I’m not blogging for mental_floss, I can usually be found wearing bright orange rubber pants and gutting, cutting and selling fish at my local Whole Foods (and winning awards for it). Sometimes, my two worlds collide and I find some scientific research involving my ocean-dwelling friends that begs for a blog post. This is one of those times.

Take the Last Train to Lobsterville, I’ll Meet you at the Station

Panulirus argus, the Caribbean spiny lobster, spends most of its time in shallow waters among coral reefs and mangrove swamps in the western Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea (as far south as Brazil and as far north as North Carolina). Every year in mid-Fall, much of their range gets hit with increased storm activity and the usually pleasant water conditions get disrupted by high winds, water turbulence, colder temperatures, and turbidity from kicked-up sediment.

After the first storm, many of the lobsters (especially those in southeast Florida, the Florida Keys, Bimini and Grand Bahama and eastern Yucatan, Mexico), which are normally nocturnal and solitary, become active in the day and gather in groups to form queues of up to 65 individuals. Once a queue is sorted out, the lobsters begin marching – single-file, with each individual maintaining antennae-to-cephalothorax contact with the lobster in front of them – into deeper, calmer water. (more…)

Ever wonder what would happen if you mixed a hot air balloon with the massive figures in the Macy’s Day Parade? While I would have thought the balloons pictured in this WebEcoist round-up would be too poorly balanced to fly and land correctly, they apparently have no trouble soaring through the air.

It does seem as though you’ll need far more hot air to travel far with one of these fantastic flying structures, but isn’t that a small price to pay to fly in a giant polar bear?

I’ve never been in a hot air balloon, but perhaps some high-flying Flossers can fill us in, would these be hard to control?

We’ve tested your knowledge of obscure fruits and veggies, but how well do you know some of the less celebrated members of the spice world? Your knowledge of cinnamon and black pepper won’t help you here.

Take the Quiz: Obscure Spices

Fermat’s Last Theorem is one of the most famous math problems in history, as it remained unsolved for well over 300 years — and Fermat himself, before his suicide, had written a margin note claiming he had a solution. Fellow _floss blogger Casey Johnston described FLT like so last year:

In 1637, Pierre de Fermat scribbled a note in the margin of his copy of the book Arithmetica. He wrote (conjectured, in math terms) that for an integer n greater that two, the equation aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ had no whole number solutions. He wrote a proof for the special case n = 4, and claimed to have a simple, “marvellous” proof that would make this statement true for all integers. However, Fermat was fairly secretive about his mathematic endeavors, and no one discovered his conjecture until his death in 1665. No trace was found of the proof Fermat claimed to have for all numbers, and so the race to prove his conjecture was on. For the next 330 years, many great mathematicians, such as Euler, Legendre, and Hilbert, stood and fell at the foot of what came to be known as Fermat’s Last Theorem. Some mathematicians were able to prove the theorem for more special cases, such as n = 3, 5, 10, and 14. Proving special cases gave a false sense of satisfaction; the theorem had to be proved for all numbers. Mathematicians began to doubt that there were sufficient techniques in existence to prove theorem. Eventually, in 1984, a mathematician named Gerhard Frey noted the similarity between the theorem and a geometrical identity, called an elliptical curve. Taking into account this new relationship, another mathematician, Andrew Wiles, set to work on the proof in secrecy in 1986. Nine years later, in 1995, with help from a former student Richard Taylor, Wiles successfully published a paper proving Fermat’s Last Theorem, using a recent concept called the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture. 358 years later, Fermat’s Last Theorem had finally been laid to rest.

In 1996, Simon Singh and John Lynch made a 45-minute documentary about Wiles and his FLT solution. It’s a surprisingly engaging story, with twists and turns and math and problem-solving (also liberal use of Penguin Cafe Orchestra in the soundtrack). Wiles comes across as a genuine mathematician — he was obsessed with FLT since boyhood, and his joy at its solution is clearly visible in this film. It’s all available on Google Video, embedded below. Have a look if you’re even vaguely interested in math! (Note: the math discussed in the film is aimed at a mainstream audience; you don’t have to be a math whiz to get the human drama of the story.)

(Via Kottke.org.)

How well do you know your margarine history? Let’s take a look at the origins of the butter substitute, and the dairy lobby’s attempts to defeat it.

Where did the name “margarine” originate?

In a chemist’s lab. French scientist Michel Eugene Chevreul discovered a new fatty acid in 1813 that he dubbed acide margarique. Chevreul’s discovery contained lustrous, pearly deposits, so he named it after the Greek word margarites, for “pearly.”

Did Chevreul take his margaric acid and head straight for the toaster?

Not quite. If you enjoy margarine, tip your cap to Emperor Napoleon III. (more…)

Solid soap is, of course, a useful consumer product. It is also possibly the perfect multi-dimensional art medium. The shape, colors, design, and scent can all be manipulated to produce just about anything the mind can imagine. Then you can mass-produce them in sizes that many people can afford to buy and use. Here are some wonderfully creative soaps that will impress your friends and family -or else have them scratching their heads in confusion!

1. Petri Dish Soap

Cleaner Science sells soap in petri dishes that resemble biological experiments. Pictured is e. coli, which smells like honey when you wash with it. Many cultures are available, or you can get a package of four small petri dishes in a sampler. Don’t miss the fluorescent cyanobacteria!

2. Movie Poster Soap

Show off your love of cinema with a bar of soap embedded with a movie poster! Movie soaps have a scent that evokes the movie theater experience, that is, a combination of popcorn, soda, and chocolate. There are other posters and movie stills available, or you can request a particular movie to be depicted in soap.

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