X-rays – a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation – were accidentally discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Roentgen, a German physics professor. Not knowing what they were, Roentgen called them X-rays – with the X standing for “unknown.”

“New Tennis Rules”

According to medical historians, there are basically two ways that pandemics end. One is when death rates plummet. The other is when fear about the disease wanes.

This has happened with most pandemics. It even happened with the Bubonic plague.

Bubonic plague has struck three times in the past 2,000 years, killing millions of people and altering the course of history. Each epidemic amplified the fear that came with the next outbreak.

The worst occurrence was the second, which began in 1331 in China. In the years between 1347 and 1351, it killed at least a third of the European population. Half of the population of Siena, Italy, died.

The plague did not end then. But the fear of it died after a few years. After a year or two of widespread fear and even hysteria in parts, denizens of even the hardest hit cities began to grow tired of the constant fear, much like people do in cities besieged by war.

Florence was one of those cities. And according to none other than Giovanni Boccaccio, people grew tired of being frightened – even though the toll of death was much higher than it is now with COVID-19.

“No more respect was accorded to dead people than would nowadays be accorded to dead goats,” he said.

After hiding in their homes for months, many people simply refused to be afraid of the threat. Their way of coping, Boccaccio wrote, was to “drink heavily, enjoy life to the full, go around singing and merrymaking, and gratify all of one’s cravings when the opportunity emerged, and shrug the whole thing off as one enormous joke.”

Jeff Allen: “My America”

Leonor Fini should be better known than she is. Born in Buenos Aires in 1906, she grew up in Italy and moved to Paris at age 24 to commence a brilliant career. She hung out with Salvador Dali and others in the Surrealist crowd, and produced art that was, IMHO, equal to theirs, though she never equaled their reputations. Her personal life was just as eccentric and romantic as Frida Kahlo’s, and, like Frida, she was beautiful and had many lovers, men and women.

True insiders in the Latin American art world have known about her forever, but I only found out about her 10 years ago. And that was by accident – when I read a story about her in a French literary magazine,

Since then, I’ve been a fan, watching for her work at auctions – a very rare phenomenon. I was hoping I could get a small piece at a good price, but those insiders were ahead of me. And when they started buying her pieces, others followed. Now her paintings are beyond my reach.

Here is one of them – called “Rasch, rasch, rasch…” –  featured in one of Christie’s online publications.

Amazing story!

Fighting the Civil War cost us a fortune. We ended up going into serious debt – equal to 100% of the country’s GDP at the time. Since there were relatively few taxes back then, Abraham Lincoln imposed the first federal income tax. Although the official version didn’t arrive until 1913, this less formal version allowed the government to pay off those war debts by taking money directly from the pockets of its citizens. Those revenues were not great in the beginning, but when the industrial revolution hit, they got big. And have stayed big ever since.

In the mood for a little fun? Try this…

Whether it’s caused by COVID-19 or another illness, you can help relieve mucus buildup in the lungs by following this doctor’s “rule of threes” – three deep breaths, three coughs, all repeated three times. Click here to see how it’s done.