Stones Stories

Prediction of the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar in December 2012 is considered a mistake of interpreters or a clever Indian joke. However, it is from this time point physicists find, for example, the change in the constant characteristics of the proton. It is easy to write off the inexplicable phenomenon to imperfect measurement technology, but one wants mystery. Especially since an amazing coincidence opened up - it was in the final year of the Mayan calendar that the world finally unraveled the secret of the unclouded azure of their religious artifacts.

In September 1819, the St. Petersburg Mineralogical Society received as a gift from the literary genius and universalist scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe a part of his personal collection of minerals. Two batches, of 105 and 153 pieces, i.e., individual pieces of geological bodies, have been recorded as having been received. Among them are amethyst, rock crystal, chalcedony, augite, various kinds of granite, quartz rock, feldspars, and mica.

The Greek word άσβεστος [ásvestos] translates as ”unquenchable.” In this case, the main useful property of asbestos, a mineral of the silicate class, is its incombustibility. The exact explanation of the paradox is probably hidden in the asbestos papyruses of the priests of ancient Egypt, which have not yet been found, but there is a hint to the solution.

One of Gogol’s most bitter and brilliant jokes is in the name and patronymic of the classic ”little man,” the protagonist of his story The Overcoat. Akakia, as we know, was called by the Byzantines as the attribute of the ceremonial royal vestment - a silk roll of ashes. It was supposed to remind the first persons of the Orthodox Empire and other participants of the ceremonies of the perishable nature of the earthly blessings, the fatality of fate and the transience of life.

The beginning of the end for the Invincible Armada and the harbinger of the end of Spain’s golden age was a sudden, violent storm in the Atlantic. At the end of May 1588 130 ships left Lisbon in the direction of the Channel to destroy the English fleet, but were forced to stand for a long repair in La Coruña in the north-west of the Pirine Peninsula.

The ”Real” Left-handed man, as opposed to the hero of the story of the same name by Nikolai Leskov, did not call to abandon the use of bricks when cleaning rifles. On the contrary, he began to actively use abrasive, though another - innovative - materials, when polishing blades of cold weapons.

The attempt to preserve an ”oasis” of pre-revolutionary monarchal life in the oldest building on Nevsky Prospect was doomed to failure. The Anichkov Palace is a less prestigious building than the Winter Palace. However, some pieces of furniture from the private apartments of Maria Feodorovna, wife of Alexander III and mother of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II, were salvaged from the pawnshop and sold abroad in 1928. Their connection with mineralogy and mining helped.

The pre-revolutionary history of the Ural emeralds is a classic detective story. The stone itself encourages fraud and forgery. As for diamonds, there is a standard technique of evaluation with 10x magnification, but the quality of an emerald is defined by eye judging by its color hue and transparency. Sometimes it is not so easy to separate the wheat from the chaff. That is why there is such a wide price range: from $3 to $650 per gram.

Today, the phrase ”Hungarian dog” will instantly conjure up an image of a short-haired dog lynx, a masterpiece of Magyar hunting breeding. They have a bright golden color and a fine sense of smell for feathery game. In Russia 200 years ago, mining professionals associated it with a subject very distant from hunting. November 1839 was the brightest month in the life of Lieutenant Alexander Platonov: he had his first-born son, and published an article in the ”Mining Journal” about the improvement of rolling technology in the mines of the Perm plants.

Two hundred and fifty years ago a new artillery gun, the carronade, appeared in the service of the English navy. In Russia at that time there was nothing similar, and then the agents of Catherine II went to Scotland to induce its inventor to work for the benefit of a hostile state.