Art and Museums

"Princess Elizabeth began her training as a mechanic in March 1945. She undertook a driving and vehicle maintenance course at Aldershot, qualifying on April 14. Newspapers at the time dubbed her “Princess Auto Mechanic.” There were a wide range of jobs available to female soldiers in the ATS as cooks, telephonists, drivers, postal workers, searchlight operators, and ammunition inspectors. Some women served as part of anti-aircraft units, although they were not allowed to fire the guns. The jobs were dangerous, and during the course of the war, 335 ATS women were killed and many more injured. By June 1945, there were around 200,000 members of the ATS from across the British Empire serving on the home front and in many overseas theaters of war."  more »

"A marriage would be a partnership in the profoundest sense. It would be the most welded commitment possible. It would presume without doubts ultimate mutual trust. It would be physically passionate, emotionally profound, mutually dependent, fully understanding of differing opinions but pliable and accepting and curious, respectful and humorous, and above all, appreciative. Maybe that is simply an annotated statement about love."  more »

In a new paper appearing in the current issue of the journal Acta Palaeontologia Polonica, paleontologist Kevin Padian floats a new hypothesis: The T. rex’s arms shrank in length to prevent accidental or intentional amputation when a pack of T. rexes descended on a carcass with their massive heads and bone-crushing teeth. A 45-foot-long T. rex, for example, might have had a 5-foot-long skull, but arms only 3 feet long — the equivalent of a 6-foot human with 5-inch arms. “What if several adult tyrannosaurs converged on a carcass? You have a bunch of massive skulls, with incredibly powerful jaws and teeth, ripping and chomping down flesh and bone right next to you. What if your friend there thinks you’re getting a little too close? They might warn you away by severing your arm,” said Padian, distinguished emeritus professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a curator at the UC Museum of Paleontology (UCMP). “So, it could be a benefit to reduce the forelimbs, since you’re not using them in predation anyway.” more »

One example of the programs available: Book Talk – Female Genius: Eliza Harriot and George Washington at the Dawn of the Constitution, Tuesday, March 8, at 1 p.m. ET; Register in advance; watch on the National Archives YouTube Channel; Mary Sarah Bilder looks to the 1780s — the age of the Constitution — to investigate the rise of a radical new idea in the English-speaking world: female genius. English-born Eliza Harriot Barons O’Connor delivered a University of Pennsylvania lecture attended by George Washington as he and other Constitutional Convention delegates gathered in Philadelphia. As the first such public female lecturer, her courageous performance likely inspired the gender-neutral language of the Constitution. more »