Meet the Beetles!…
In 1912, Ladislas Starevich, serving then as Director of the Museum of Natural History in Lithuania, set out to film the combat of stag beetles, but the nocturnal insects kept shutting down when the lights went on. His solution, inspired by the work of Émile “Father of the Animated Cartoon” Cohl, was to use dead beetles…
Starevich went on to develop theatrical narratives and story arcs for his “actors,” creating the likes of the dreamy-but-eerie film you can watch here:
Read the full story at the ever-educational Dangerous Minds.
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As we recall that Starevich had lots of actors from which to choose, we might send carefully-sculpted birthday greetings to Joseph Constantine Carpue; he was born on this date in 1764. A surgeon and anatomist, Carpue performed the first rhinoplasty in England, adapting a technique developed centuries earlier in India. In 1814, after practicing on several cadavers, Carpue operated at the Duke of York’s Hospital, Chelsea, on a British military officer who had lost his nose to the toxic effects of mercury treatments for his liver, though his nasal bones were intact, and on another whose nose and cheek were mutilated by a sword. These two successful operations are considered the birth of modern plastic surgery. (In fact, in the late 16th century, a Venetian surgeon had used arm/shoulder skin– as opposed to the forehead skin used by the ancient Indians and Carpue– but his procedure was never adopted.)
