#medieval

#medieval

Medieval Branding: Modern Day Logos Re-imagined in Medieval Style by Ilya StalloneIn his project called "Medieval Branding," graphic artist Ilya Stallone from Saint Petersburg, Russia, re-imagined famous modern day brands as if they were businesses during the Middle Ages.Stallone retained the main graphical elements that make the various logos instantly recognizable, but adapted them for the medieval period. Thus, Audi's logo became interlinked wagon wheels, whereas YouTube's logo looks like a puppet show, and Microsoft's Windows are made from panes of a gothic castle window.Naturally, a dose of dark and offbeat humor found its way into Stallone's re-imagined medieval logos: Lacoste's alligator was shown to swallow a praying man and Burger King's brand shows two kings sandwiched instead of meat patties in the burger. Brilliant!Images: ilya_stallone_artist/Instagram#logo #brand #medieval #IlyaStallone

Fun With Medieval MarginaliaWe've posted a lot of images of marginalia from medieval times at Neatorama, mostly to explore themes and weird tropes that occur over and over again. There's an entire world of illustrations from bored monks who just liked to doodle in the margins. The Instagram account Medieval Marginalia posts the funnier drawings found in medieval texts and artworks without context. After all, most of them appeared without any context in the first place. The poster gives us a punch line for a caption, which is always followed by commenters who have more punch lines. The top image is a caption challenge, in which all the comments are funny, but I really liked "My girls and I when the winter is over." But there are also posts full of surprising information. For example, this image is supposed to be a beaver.

Chemists Recreated Gunpowder from a Medieval Recipe and Tested it with a CannonGunpowder, while explosive, is only a mixture of sulfur, carbon, and potassium nitrate (also known as saltpeter). But in medieval Europe, chemists added other ingredients into the mix, namely brandy, varnish, and vinegar. Of course, the next question would be, why?To answer this, experts at the US Army Military Academy at West Point decided to create gunpowders based on these old recipes. They also fired these gunpowders in a replica cannon.The recipes were written in the Feuerwerkbuch (which means "firework book" in German). According to Cliff Rogers, a West Point history professor, the Feuerwerkbuch was the go-to book of master gunners. The book provided invaluable information about processing gunpowder ingredients, making gunpowder, and loading and firing a cannon.Unfortunately, the researchers faced many challenges during this study, such as today's ingredients being too pure and not being able to check how far the cannonballs traveled because the military testing grounds were filled with unexploded weapons.Nevertheless, their research suggested that gunpowder recipes did improve over time.More about this over at Wired.(All Images: wpaczocha/ Pixabay)#Chemistry #Gunpowder #Medieval #Sulfur