1586: Sir
Thomas Harriot introduces potatoes to Europe 1794: French Revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre and 22 other leaders of "the Terror" are guillotined 1858: The first ever aerial photo is taken (from a balloon) by French photographer Nadar 1900: The hamburger is created by Louis Lassing, in Connecticut 1933: The first singing telegram is delivered in New York 1938: The Cunard-White Star liner, Mauretania, is launched at Birkenhead 1954: On the Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando, is released 1959: The UK starts using postal codes 1988: Paddy Ashdown, right, is elected the first leader of the new Social and Liberal Democrat Party, later the Lib Dems 2008: Weston-super-Mare's Grand Pier burns down for the second time in 80 years
He was previously dean of the
Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences at East Carolina.
Christopher Marlowe plays a large role in the second book, and Matthew's other famous friends include Walter Raleigh and
Thomas Harriot.
1586 - Sir
Thomas Harriot introduces potatoes to Europe.
But the "travels" take us to other places: Prague, at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, and especially his "mathematician" Johannes Kepler; England, particularly the Northumberland Circle, with
Thomas Harriot (who observed the moon's mountains even before Galileo), and John Donne (whose poetry found Galileo's discoveries socially subversive); France, especially amateur astronomer and cultural entrepreneur Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc, and the Jesuit College of La Fleche (attended at the time by Rene Descartes); and China, through the correspondence and activities of Jesuit missionaries.
The play's oblique references to the Hesperides and the "west" seem insufficiently pliable to stretch across the Atlantic, and Nardizzi's reading of the catalog of trees and tree products in
Thomas Harriot's Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588), as good as it is, feels a little misplaced.
The text is clearly written, and features a number of well-chosen reproductions from early modern maps, travel accounts (by
Thomas Harriot, and the Drake MS), and other writings about food, which complement the in-text analysis.
Their topics include how
Thomas Harriot may have saved Jamestown, the evolution of Lord Baltimore's 17th-century manor, the past 30 years of archeology of the plantations in Ulster, the use of molded decoration on 17th century clay tobacco pipes, and the archeology of Robert "King" Carter and the material life of Virginia in 1680-1740.
In a thoughtful contribution, Nicholas Luccketti surmises the resourcefulness of
Thomas Harriot, the scientist with Walter Raleigh's expedition to Roanoke Island.
* ICK recognised with a shock faces seen only in procession and on pamphlets: Ralegh, Harry Percy, Lord Stanley and
Thomas Harriot.
The journal is now housed m our English Department in the
Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences.
History books in particular have traditionally dated the origins of American literature back to the publication in 1588 of
Thomas Harriot's chronicle, A Briefe and True Report of the New-found Land of Virginia.
