The first thing that caught my eye was the string of pearls worn by the lady being served tea from a silver pot. Pearl fishing has been going on for centuries and in place like India it was a big undertaking.
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| Pearl fishery at Tuticorin, India Artwork by Johann Nieuhof, c 1663 |
Glen Miller - 1942 recording
This modern day string of pearls is a marvel to behold.
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| Cosmic dust clouds in Messier 78 |
This image of the region surrounding the reflection nebula Messier 78, just to the north of Orion’s belt, shows clouds of cosmic dust threaded through the nebula like a string of pearls. The observations, made with the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope and shown here in orange, use the heat glow of interstellar dust grains to show astronomers where new stars are being formed. They are overlaid on a view of the region in visible light.
I must include a lady wearing a sting of pearls; the one I've chosen is Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of US President Theodore Roosevelt after launching the USS Theodore Roosevelt in October 1959.
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| Alice Roosevelt Longworth - 1959 |
Can you see the broken champagne bottle in her hand. She was supposed to break the bottle on the bow of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the first Polaris submarine built on the West Coast. She had declined a dress rehearsal for the launching ceremony. She missed the ship when she swung the bottle and in desperation threw the bottle at the ship - and missed again. Fortunately a crew member on the ship pulled the bottle up by the attached cable and smashed the bottle on the bow before the ship hit the water.
The string of pearls that Alice was wearing was a wedding present given her by the Cuban government.
Somehow I don't think she would have been relaxed enough to listen to:
Aria from The Pearl Fishers - Bizet
Lorna Pollock - piano.
For more pearls of wisdom you should visit Sepia Saturday-129
