(Roughly) Daily

A Ferris wheel of chipmunks, formerly part of the Dead Pals of Sam Sanfillippo

Last October, Atlas Obscura co-presented a Rogue Taxidermy Fair with its fellow Brooklyn-based (and former Roughly Daily subject) Morbid Anatomy in celebration of a new book on “rogue taxidermy.”

The Crucified Sheep

Read more about– and see more of– the Fair at “The Crucified Sheep, Tattooed Frogs, and Crocheted Skeletons of a Rogue Taxidermy Fair in Brooklyn,” and revisit (R)Ds earlier look at rogue taxidermy here.

* Mark Twain

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As we strike a pose, we might recall that it was on this date in 1697 that Isaac Newton received and solved Jean Bernoulli’s brachistochrone problem.  The Swiss mathematician Bernoulli had challenged his colleagues to solve it within six months.  Newton not only solved the problem before going to bed that same night, but in doing so, invented a new branch of mathematics called the calculus of variations.  He had resolved the issue of specifying the curve connecting two points displayed from each other laterally, along which a body, acted upon only by gravity, would fall in the shortest time.  Newton, age 55, sent the solution to be published, at his request, anonymously.  But the brilliant originality of the work betrayed his identity, for when Bernoulli saw the solution he commented, “We recognize the lion by his claw.”

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