My father once said to me “One of the interesting things about getting older is realizing that the clichés, prejudices, and popular wisdoms that we rejected as young, educated, independent thinkers turn out, in the end, to be true.”

I love this idea, in part, for its double-contrarianism.

The Way to Wealth by Benjamin Franklin reminds me of my father’s world-view, formed as a Depression-era child, delivered in Franklin’s 18^thCentury style.

Also, these clichés are true.

We know “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,” and a few others, but I had not heard most of them.

The Way to Wealth originally formed the preface to Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack.  The book’s conceit is that Franklin’s alter-ego Richard overhears an old man (Father Abraham) quoting his favorite parts from the Almanack to a group gathered together before an auction.  As such, the farmer gives a kind of fast-and-furious greatest hits of aphorisms, tied together by the themes of Industry, Care, Frugality, and Knowledge.

Some of my favorites from this book, which I hadn’t already heard:

On complaints about government taxes:

Friends, the taxes are, indeed, very heavy; and, if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us.  We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the commissioners cannot ease or deliver us, by allowing an abatement.

On the urge to buy things that seem cheap, on sale, or a bargain:

Here you are all got together at this sale of fineries and knickknacks.  You call them goods; but, if you do not take care, they will prove evils to some of you.  You expect they will be sold cheap, and, perhaps, they may [be bought] for less than they cost; but, if you have no occasion for them, they must be dear to you…He means, that perhaps the cheapest is apparent only, and not real; or the bargain, by straightening thee in thy business, may do thee more harm than good.  For in another place he says ‘Many have been ruined by buying good penny worths.’

On the relativistic nature of time, if you owe money at the end of the month:

When you have got your bargain, you may, perhaps, think a little of payment; but, as Poor Richard says, ‘Creditors have better memories than debtors; creditors are superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times.’  The day comes round before you are aware, and the demand is made before you are able to satisfy it; or, if you bear your debt in mind, the term which at first seemed so long, will, as it lessens, appear extremely short: Time will seem to have added wings to his heels as well as his shoulders. ‘Those have a short lent, who owe money to be paid at Easter.’

The little book’s scant thirty pages could, with smaller type and larger sheets, condense to about five pages.  So you’re looking at about 10 minutes of dense wisdom from a founding father of the United States.

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Two state names, Arkansas and Kansas, share all but two letters in the exactly the same order. So why do we pronounce them differently?

We can thank the French. Arkansas was named for the French plural of a Native American tribe, while Kansas is the English spelling of a similar one. Since the letter "s" at the end of French words is usually silent, we pronounce Bill Clinton's home state "Arkansaw."

Technically, Kansas and Arkansas stem from the same basic root, kká:ze: the native root for the Kansa tribe, often thought to mean "people of the south wind."

Kansas is named for the Kansas River, which is named for the Kansa tribe. It's the English spelling though, so naturally, we pronounce the final "s."

The French, however, left their mark on Arkansas' pronunciation. French explorers learned of a sect of the Quapaw, a Native American tribe in the territory now known as Arkansas, from the Algonquians, who called the people akansa (most likely related to the Kansa tribe).

Various French documents and books spelled the state's name various ways — Arkancas, Akansa, Arkanceas. But "it is absolutely certain that the name as pronounced by the Indians was the same as if pronounced in our language Arkansaw," according to the "Publication of the Arkansas Historical Association.

The "s" on the end is simply a French addition then and a silent one at that. "It is clear, then, that the name Kansas, is spelled in English, while the name Arkansas is of French orthography, and that the two names should not be pronounced alike," according to the Arkansas Historical Association.

There's evidence that some people tried to say the "s" (as in Ar-kan-zus) after the formation of the state government. In 1881, the Arkansas state legislature ruled on that matter, noting the "confusion" about the state's pronunciation. Lawmakers formally endorsed the "saw" ending, discouraging any "innovation" to pronounce the state similarly to Kansas.

SEE ALSO: Here's What All 50 State Names Mean

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It’s easy to forget that business and commerce have been around for a long time, in fact almost as long as civilization itself.

William Playfair—who among other things, invented the bar chart—published a book in 1805 which investigated the causes of decline and fall of wealthy nations.

The chart below was in the very front of the book. It’s particularly provocative when read alongside modern attempts to look at the way that the economic productivity of countries changes over time, like this excellent Yearbook of Investment Returns from Credit Suisse.

Both excellent works serve as reminders that investors are well served by periodically remembering how dramatically things can change over time. In the graph below, the United States of America is newly ascendant in the international scene: a true emerging market. Russia, England, France, and Germany are the world’s economic powerhouses. China and India are not mentioned.

It’s amazing what can change in a few hundred years, or even in a few decades.

To choose an example of a drastic change closer to living memory, did you know there was a time when serious businesspeople doubted that a South Korean company could produce a microwave? In “The Silent War“, a 1990 book about the future of competition in business, the author details what Samsung had to overcome in order to compete.

A glance at their market share in products that require highly advanced manufacturing processes, like hard drives and flash memory, makes it almost funny that there exists in living memory a time when serious businesspeople were skeptical they could pull something like that off. In the 45 years since Samsung’s founding, the competitive landscape in business has altered so much it is barely recognizable.

The investment ramification of this walk through history is straightforward: what’s changing under your feet? Hit play on the chart below, and watch as the circles (which correspond to a local GDP Growth rate in a given year) and consider how you’d go about making sense of this seemingly random flickering of expansion and contraction.

If you had to try and fit it into a chart as simple as Playfair’s, could you? What would you emphasize?

(If you can’t see the chart, try refreshing the page or clicking here)

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Thomas Edison did not try 10,000 times before inventing the light bulb, nor did he labor in a dusty workshop by himself.

That's according to David Burkus, author of "The Myths of Creativity," who says America's favorite innovation story may have been the result of a tremendous publicity push.

In his book, Burkus debunks the popular tale of Edison and what he calls the "lone creator myth." His claim? That we love the story of the solo-genius, the starving artist, the one brilliant man against the world — even if it's not always true.

In the case of Edison, Burkus argues that the famous creator didn't invent the light bulb so much as perfect it, with the muscle of a massive publicity machine behind him. Edison's main laboratory, built in a rural New Jersey town called Menlo Park, was famous for generating more than 400 patents in just six years. That rapid clip made it known as the "invention factory" and established the popular image of Edison tinkering late into the night.

What's less well known, Burkus claims, is that Edison worked with a team of 14 or so engineers, machinists, and physicists — collectively known as "muckers." The muckers resided on the upper floors of the Menlo Park warehouse while Edison split his time between inventing, dealing with clients and investors, and speaking to the press.

"The muckers at Menlo Park were such a fertile source of ideas that it seems odd that their presence is typically dropped from the story," Burkus writes. "But this isn't a coincidence. It was by design."

"As their work progressed," he continues, "the team of muckers quickly realized the power behind Edison's name. They found that when they advertised their ideas or tried to sell themselves to potential clients, their audience seemed to like the notion that a single individual had authorship of their ideas, especially when that person was Edison."

In short, the muckers created Edison, the archetypal inventor. They saw that Edison by himself made for a more valuable brand than their collective group, and capitalized on that by mythologizing him.

Burkus is not the first to challenge the lone creator ideology. In a July 2011 paper, "The Myth of the Sole Inventor," Stanford Law School professor Mark A. Lemley disputed the invention stories of Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel Morse, and Eli Whitney.

Edison, Lemley writes, "did not 'invent' the light bulb in any meaningful sense." Electric lighting was long in the works when Edison came on the scene, and his work attracted several patent infringement lawsuits from his contemporaries. "What Edison really did well," Lemley argues, "was commercialize the invention."

Burkus agrees that Edison was a superb marketer, even if the actual details are fuzzy — he tested 1,000, 6,000, 10,000, or some other number of filaments depending on the source. But the message he circulated in the press was clear. "Edison told of a worldwide search for the perfect fiber in order to advertise the rigor of his invention process and the superiority of his new lightbulb," Burkus writes. 

While Lemley and Berkus do not agree on all the specifics, they are fundamentally in agreement on two points: (1) that Edison's work on the lightbulb depended on the contributions of others, and (2) that his success was linked to the commercialization of a product more than its actual invention.

Thomas Edison, in other words, is not so much the man behind the myth as his story is the myth behind the man. How crucial, after all, is the story of Steve Jobs to the image of Apple? Or of Larry Page and Sergey Brin toiling away in a garage (ironically enough, in Menlo Park, Calif.) to our perception of Google?

Sometimes — perhaps oftentimes — myth-making is the most valuable marketing tool.

SEE ALSO: Malcolm Gladwell's Fascinating Theory On Why You Should Be A Big Fish In A Little Pond

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Nearly three-quarters of Russians believe that homosexually is morally unacceptable, more than disapprove of other hot-button issues such as extramarital affairs, gambling and abortion.

The numbers come from newly released data from the Pew Research Center, which surveyed Russians on their moral attitudes in spring 2013. Russian attitudes toward homosexuality have been at the forefront given the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Just eight months before the games, Russia's governmental body, the Duma, passed a law making it illegal to distribute homosexual "propaganda" to minors, which includes staging gay pride events and advocating for gay rights.

The law also bans foreign same-sex couples from adopting Russian children.

On the opening day of the Olympics (Feb. 7), police arrested at least 14 gay rights activists in St. Petersburg and Moscow, according to news reports. It's unclear what charges the activists may face, as Russia also bans unapproved protests. [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]

History of anti-gay attitudes

Understanding Russia's widespread gay sentiment requires a look back, said Tatiana Mikhailova, a senior instructor of Russian Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Russia's October Revolution of 1917 threw Russian society into upheaval, Mikhailova told Live Science. Traditional gender roles fell to revolutionary ideology, and the family structure was seen as outdated, she said.

Before the revolution, Czarist Russia was hardly friendly to gays. In 1716, homosexuality among military men was made punishable by flogging, rape and forced labor, according to Dan Healy, a professor of Russian history at Oxford University. In 1835, Czar Nicholas I extended the ban on male same-sex relationships to civilians.

The revolutionaries threw out the Czarist legal code and drew up their own, which did not criminalize homosexuality. It's not clear why, Healy said, but it's possible Russia's new leadership was following a tradition set by the French Revolution that dumped religion-based laws. [Dictator Deaths: How 13 Notorious Leaders Died]

This progressive approach to homosexuality did not last long. Joseph Stalin, who consolidated power over the 1920s, and his secret police appointee, Genrikh Yagoda, drafted a new law penalizing homosexuals, whom they portrayed as spies and scoundrels. By 1934, homosexuality was again illegal in Russia, with a minimum sentence of three to five years in prison. Prison often meant the Gulag, where convicts were forced into hard labor, Healy said.

Stalin's anti-sodomy law was repealed in 1993, one of many Stalinist laws removed in the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR.

Modern attitudes

But acceptance has not come easily. One reason, Mikhailova said, is the popular tendency to conflate erroneously homosexuality with pedophilia and rape.

"For a long period of time Russian men and Russian women who were kept in prisons were subjugated and sexually assaulted in order to keep them complacent," she said. Men who were raped were known as "roosters," a term that is still one of the "most painful words" to call a man in Russia, Mikhailova said. [Understanding the 10 Most Destructive Human Behaviors]

With rape and homosexuality equated, it's easy for leaders to insult gay people unapologetically. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill I, said in July that gay marriage is a "very dangerous apocalyptic symptom." And church leaders regularly link homosexuality with pedophilia.

"Where gays are allowed, pedophilia will soon flourish," says Russian Orthodox priest Sergei Rybko in a new BBC documentary, "Hunted," released this month, that explores violence toward Russian gays.

The Russian Orthodox Church is a major driver of anti-gay public opinion, Mikhailova said, but there is a paradox at play.

In most countries, religiosity is linked to anti-gay attitudes. Among Americans, 74 percent of nonreligious people approve of gay marriage, compared with only 23 percent of white evangelical Protestants, according to a Pew survey. Likewise, the most religious countries tend to be less accepting of gay rights, Pew has found.

Russia (along with China) is an outlier. Few Russians say religion is central to their lives; the country scores on par with many Western European countries in terms of lack of religiosity, but only 9 percent of Russians say homosexuality is acceptable in the new survey. Another 9 percent say homosexuality is not a moral issue, and 72 percent say being gay is unacceptable.

In comparison, 69 percent of Russians say extramarital affairs are unacceptable, 62 percent disapprove of gambling, and 44 percent say abortion is immoral. [6 Things Russians Think Are More Acceptable Than Being Gay]

While the average Russian may not attend church frequently or pray fervently, the Orthodox Church still holds sway over public opinion, Mikhailova said.

"The church is taking a more and more prominent place in Russia, and Putin and his government constantly talk about spiritual values," she said. "Traditional" values are portrayed as what makes Russia strong.

"The rhetoric of sin is an important rhetoric right now for Russians," Mikhailova said.

Homosexuality and the Olympics

The international organization Human Rights Watch warned last week (Feb. 4) that harassment and violence against gays, lesbians and bisexual and transgender people in Russia is widespread and may be on the rise.

An anonymous survey by The Russian LGBT Network in St. Petersburg found that 50 percent of gay and lesbian respondents had been harassed for their sexuality, and 15 percent had been physically attacked. On Feb. 3, a court in eastern Russia sentenced three men to between nine and 12 years in prison each for the beating and stabbing death of a man they believed to be gay, one of several recently reported crimes allegedly motivated by anti-gay sentiment.

Historians warn that despite international outcry, it will take time and "patient engagement" to turn Russia into a more tolerant place. In the U.K., an anti-gay propaganda law nearly passed as recently as 1987, Healy said in a talk given in the U.K. on Saturday (Feb. 8). The national conversation at the time was vicious, but England, Scotland and Wales will celebrate their first same-sex marriage ceremonies this year.

"There was no effective national conversation about the status of LGBT citizens in the new Russia until very recently," Healy said in his speech. "What people knew about homosexuality came from the legacies of the Stalin era and the Gulag camps."

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

• 10 Milestones in Gay Rights History
• 5 Surprising Facts About Gay Conversion Therapy
• 8 Supreme Court Decisions that Changed US Families

Copyright 2014 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

SEE ALSO: This Map Shows The Global Divide On Homosexuality

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The authenticity of the Shroud of Turin has been in question for centuries and scientific investigations over the last few decades have only seemed to muddle the debate. Is the revered cloth a miracle or an elaborate hoax?

Now, a study claims neutron emissions from an ancient earthquake that rocked Jerusalem could have created the iconic image, as well as messed up the radiocarbon levels that later suggested the shroud was a medieval forgery. But other scientists say this newly proposed premise leaves some major questions unanswered.

The Shroud of Turin, which bears a faint image of a man's face and torso, is said to be the fabric that covered Jesus' body after his crucifixion in A.D. 33. Though the Catholic Church doesn't have an official position on the cloth, the relic is visited by tens of thousands of worshippers at the Turin Cathedral in Italy each year. [Religious Mysteries: 8 Alleged Relics of Jesus]

Carbon and quakes

Radiocarbon dating tests conducted at three different labs in the 1980s indicated the cloth was less than 800 years old, produced in the Middle Ages, between approximately A.D. 1260 and 1390. The first records of the shroud begin to appear in medieval sources around the same time, which skeptics don't think is a coincidence. Those results were published in the journal Nature in 1989. But critics in favor of a much older date for the cloth have alleged that those researchers took a sample of fabric that was used to patch up the burial shroud in the medieval period, or that the fabric had been subjected to fires, contamination and other damaged that skewed the results.

The new theory hinges on neutrons released by a devastating earthquake that hit Old Jerusalem around the same time that Jesus is believed to have died. [Who Was Jesus, the Man?]

All living things have the same ratio of stable carbon to radioactive carbon-14, but after death, the radioactive carbon decays in a predictable pattern over time. That's why scientists can look at the carbon-14 concentration in organic archaeological materials like fabrics, bones and wood to estimate age. Carbon-14 is typically created when neutrons from cosmic rays collide with nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere (though it can be unleashed by manmade nuclear reactions, too).

The group of scientists, led by Alberto Carpinteri of the Politecnico di Torino in Italy, suspect high-frequency pressure waves generated in the Earth's crust during this earthquake could have produced significant neutron emissions. (They simulated this by crushing very brittle rock specimens under a press machine.)

These neutron emissions could have interacted directly with nitrogen atoms in the linen fibers, inducing chemical reactions that created the distinctive face image on the shroud, the scientists say. The reactions also could have led to "a wrong radiocarbon dating," which would explain the results of the 1989 experiments, Carpinteri said in a statement.

Giulio Fanti, a professor of mechanical engineering at Padua University, published a book last year "Il Mistero della Sindone," translated as "The Mystery of the Shroud," (Rizzoli, 2013), arguing that his own analysis proves the shroud dates to Jesus' lifetime. In an email, Fanti said he is not sure if a neutron emission is the only possible source responsible for creating the body image. (His own theories include a corona discharge.) However, he wrote that he is "confident" the 1980s radiocarbon dating "furnished wrong results probably due to a neutron emission."

Shaky science?

Even if it is theoretically possible for earthquake-generated neutrons to have caused this kind of reaction, the study doesn't address why this effect hasn't been seen elsewhere in the archaeological record, Gordon Cook, a professor of environmental geochemistry at the University of Glasgow, explained.

"It would have to be a really local effect not to be measurable elsewhere," Cook told Live Science. "People have been measuring materials of that age for decades now and nobody has ever encountered this."

Christopher Ramsey, director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, had a similar issue with the findings.

"One question that would need to be addressed is why the material here is affected, but other archaeological and geological material in the ground is not," Ramsey wrote in an email. "There are huge numbers of radiocarbon dates from the region for much older archaeological material, which certainly don't show this type of intense in-situ radiocarbon production (and they would be much more sensitive to any such effects)."

Ramsey added that using radiocarbon dating to study objects from seismically active regions, such as regions like Japan, generally has not been problematic.

It seems unlikely that the new study, published in the journal Meccanica, will settle any of the long-standing disputes about how and when the cloth was made, which depend largely on faith.

"If you want to believe in the Shroud of Turin, you believe in it," Cook said.

• The Holy Land: 7 Amazing Archaeological Finds
• Proof of Jesus Christ? 7 Pieces of Evidence Debated
• Religion and Science: 6 Visions of Earth's Core

SEE ALSO: Gorgeous Pictures Of The Holy Land From 120 Years Ago

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Whom do you put in charge of your country after you've overthrown a king?

We now know the answer of course — just call the new leader "president" and make him accountable to two other branches of government.

But for a faction at the Constitutional Convention — the triumph of which, we celebrate this week— the answer was not so simple.

For Delegate Edmund Randolph of Virgina, the country had not gone through eight years of war only to reconstruct the British system at home.

A single executive would amount to "the foetus of monarchy," he said, according to James Madison's notes on the debate. "The fixt genius of the people of America required a different form of Government."

Randolph believed that in general, pluralities were superior to a single decision-maker; a lone "Magistrate," as he referred to the position, would struggle to gain the necessary confidence to properly govern.

Plus, nominees to the position would inevitably come from more populous areas, giving rural areas short shrift.

A three-person executive, Randolph concluded, would be optimal. Per Madison: 

"He could not see why the great requisites for the Executive department, vigor, despatch & responsibility could not be found in three men, as well as in one man. The Executive ought to be independent. It ought therefore in order to support its independence to consist of more than one."

Delegate Roger Sherman of Connecticut was more agnostic on the number of men (and, unfortunately, it was going to be men) to serve in the executive, but that was only because he conceived of the position as more of an administrator — a kind of modern-day city manager, only with the entire country as his jurisdiction.

The office, he explained, should be limited to carrying out the will of the people as expressed in the legislature, which could add or reduce the number of people holding executive office at will:

"As [legislators] were the best judges of the business which ought to be done by the Executive department, and consequently of the number necessary from time to time for doing it, he wished the number might not be fixed, but that the legislature should be at liberty to appoint one or more as experience might dictate."

If these arguments don't seem convincing now, they weren't then either.

Randolph and Sherman lost the vote on the question 7-3. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts probably wins for most colorful counter-argument:

"Mr. Gerry was at a loss to discover the policy of three members for the Executive. It wd. be extremely inconvenient in many instances, particularly in military matters, whether relating to the militia, an army, or a navy. It would be a general with three heads."

Can't have that. 

Historians agree that the unanimous election of General George Washington to the presidency of the Convention helped nudge the executive in the direction of a single office holder. 

It also helped reinforce that the executive would be referred to as "the President."

But how would you address him to his face, now that the war was over? 

John Adams, Washington's vice president (this question now came after ratification), had some unusual ideas for this. He wrote to a friend:

"A royal or at least a princely title will be found indispensably necessary to maintain the reputation, authority, and dignity of the President. His Highness, or, if you will, His Most Benign Highness, is the correct title that will comport with his constitutional prerogatives and support his state in the minds of our own people or foreigners." 

Eventually he convinced a Senate committee to propose, "His Highness the President of the United States of America, and Protector of their Liberties."

That didn't get very far either.

Here's what happened next, according to Gordon S. Wood:

"When Jefferson learned of Adams’s obsession with titles and the Senate’s action, he could only shake his head and recall Benjamin Franklin’s now famous characterization of Adams as someone who means well for his country, is always an honest man, often a wise one, and sometimes and in some things, absolutely out-of-his senses."

But somehow Washington, perhaps out of deference to his friend and sidekick, seconded Adams' argument, Wood writes:

"Washington himself had initially favored for a title "His High Mightiness, the President of the United States and Protector of Their Liberties."

Eventually, though, Washington was talked down, and established the convention we still know today:

"When the President heard the criticism that such titles smacked of monarchy, he changed his mind and was relieved when the House of Representatives under Madison’s leadership succeeded in fixing the simple title of “Mr. President.”

Still, an uncomfortably close call.

SEE ALSO: The true story of how the US almost had a government like France

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The Jones Act has struck again.

NorthJersey.com's John C. Ensslin reports an emergency shipment of road salt to relieve the state's depleted supplies are stuck in Maine because the vessel carrying them is not flying a U.S. flag.

Enacted in 1920, the Jones Act (formally the Maritime Act) dictates that all vessels traveling between U.S. ports be American made and fly American colors. It came into existence at a time when the sinking of the Lusitania, which brought the country into World War I, was still fresh in everyone's minds. 

Today that threat has largely vanished. 

Yet the law remains on the books, presumably because no elected official would want to deal with the optics of halting something so superficially pro-American.

But just in the past few years we've seen several instances of how harmful it is.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, emergency fuel rations could not be brought into the east coast until a federal waiver was obtained.

And many believe the act has kept gas prices elevated, since there is now a shortage of Jones Act-eligible vessels in the U.S. that can deliver the booming crude coming out of the country's midsection.

A waiver for the situation in New Jersey is currently under discussion, Ensslin writes.

"I’ve not heard from the federal government any reasonable explanation that would preclude a waiver under these circumstances,” Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick said. 

Read the full story on NorthJersey.com »

SEE ALSO: The US 20: 20 Megatrends Reshaping The Country

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The U.S. economy wasn't always the biggest in the world. And in a few years, it will most likely lose its position as the biggest economy in the world.

Here's an interesting chart from Nomura's Alastair Newton using data from economist Angus Maddison. It shows the evolving global economic shares of the U.S., Western Europe, China, and India.

SEE ALSO: US Markets Are Closed Monday, But The Economy Will Be Open All Week — Here's Your Complete Preview

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The tiny Middle Eastern state of Qatar has come a long way since it gained independence in 1971.

Qatar's capital, Doha, was a sleepy pearl fishing community until the '90s, when it began tapping into its vast offshore natural gas reserves. After investing heavily in liquefied natural-gas technology, Qatar is now one of the leading exporters in the world, with a sovereign wealth fund (known as the Qatar Investment Authority) worth over $85 billion, according to CNN Money.

Today, it is home to the headquarters of the country's largest oil and gas companies, and a population of almost 600,000.

And the city is not done growing. As a result of Qatar's increasing corporate and commercial activity, 47 new skyscrapers are currently being built in Doha, according to Emporis. New hotels will also be joining Qatar's skyline to attract even more tourists to its spa villages, huge malls, and scenic artificial islands. In 2022, Doha will even host the FIFA World Cup in its brand-new (questionable-looking) stadium.

To see how far the country has come since it gained its independence from the United Kingdom just over four decades ago, we compiled some photos of Doha then and now.

THEN: Here's what the skyline of the Qatari capital of looked like in 1977.

NOW: Here's the Doha skyline today. There are currently 47 buildings under construction in the city, according to Emporis.

Source: Emporis

THEN: Here's what the heart of Doha's commercial center looked like back in 1968.

The new George Clooney film "The Monuments Men" movie pales in comparison to the real art historians, architects, curators, and museum directors who saved Europe's finest art during World War II.

These men and women were civilians who were launched into a deadly war and tasked with saving an entire culture.

It was well-known that Adolf Hitler was hoarding Europe's plundered art for his planned Führer Museum in Linz, Austria. In addition to stealing Europe's paintings and sculptures, he also intended to destroy "degenerate" works of art that he despised from both Jewish and modern artists.

So Francis Henry Taylor, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, lobbied Washington D.C. to protect Europe's museums and art. President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed, and established the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program in 1943. The goal: to recover and return works of art that had been stolen and hidden by the Nazis.

Despite extraordinary odds, this team of art experts were highly successful. Because of their efforts, more than five million works of art were saved or discovered in Nazi hiding places, many of which are still immensely famous today.

Here are 11 of the most amazing paintings, sculptures, and architecture that were rescued or recovered during history's greatest treasure hunt.

Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa"

In 1939, prescient Louvre officials bundled the "Mona Lisa" into an ambulance and evacuated it from the Louvre along with 400,000 other works of art. The famous painting was on the go through much of the war, expertly hidden in various homes throughout the French countryside. It avoided capture with the help of the Monuments Men by changing locations more than six times, and was finally returned to the Louvre in 1945.

Jan van Eyck's "Ghent Altarpiece"

One of the most frequently stolen art works in the world, the "Ghent Altarpiece" is ginormous, weighing over a ton. It was coveted by Hitler since it symbolized the ideal of Aryan supremacy, having been painted by a Germanic artist.

It was taken by the Germans in 1942 from its hiding place at Chateau de Pau, in the south of France, and found in the Altaussee salt mine by the Monuments Men after the war.

Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper"

In one of the most amazing stories from WWII, da Vinci’s "Last Supper"was threatened by the Allies bombing Milan in August 1943. The mural is on the refectory wall of the convent at Santa Maria delle Grazie, and was saved by the Monuments Men by jury-rigging a scaffold of steel bars and sandbags around the wall. After the raid, it was the only wall in the refectory still standing.

Michelangelo's "Madonna of Bruges"

The Monuments Men arrived just days after the Nazi's had stolen this two-ton marble Madonna and Child sculpture from the Bruges Notre Dame Cathedrale in Belgium.

Michelangelo’s statue was later recovered in the ancient Steinberg salt mine in Altaussee— one of the many underground hiding places used by Hitler and the Nazis to stash art — by the Monuments Men.

Leonardo da Vinci's "Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (Lady with an Ermine)"

Another one of Da Vinci's most famous paintings, "Lady with an Ermine" was almost immediately seized by the Nazis after the German occupation of Poland in 1939. In 1940, Hans Frank, the Governor General of Poland, requested it be returned to Kraków and hung it in his suite of offices. At the end of WWII, it was discovered by the Monuments Men in Frank's country home in Bavaria, and was returned to Poland's Czartoryski Museum in Kraków.

Édouard Manet's "In The Conservatory"

This huge oil painting was looted from the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin during the Nazi plunder.

American soldiers and the Monuments Men later discovered Manet's "In the Conservatory" hidden in Germany's Merkers salt mines along with large amounts of Nazi gold, and many other stolen works of art in 1945.

The Bust of Charlemagne

This bust was donated to the Aachen Cathedral, a Germany church, in 1349 by Charles IV. It is one of the most highly prized Charlemagne relics, and is thought to contain a piece of his skull. Monuments Men George Stout and sculptor Walker Hancock went behind enemy lines while under fire to reach the Aachen treasury hidden in a tunnel. It still can be seen in the church today.

Johannes Vermeer's "The Astronomer"

In 1940, this painting was seized from Edouard de Rothschild in Paris by the Nazi's Reichsleiter Rosenberg Task force (essentially the German equivalent of the Monuments Men) after the German invasion of France. A small swastika was stamped on the back in black ink, and the painting was sent to Hitler on one of his personal trains and hidden in the ancient Steinberg salt mine in Altausse.

When it was discovered after the war, it was returned to the Rothchild collection.

Original manuscript of Ludvig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 6

In the same tunnel that hid the relics of Charlemagne, 600 paintings, and 100 sculptures was the original manuscript of Ludvig van Beethoven's sixth symphony. The tunnel in Siegen, Germany was still behind enemy lines when the Monuments Men went in to try and save the remaining art.

Rembrandt's "Self-portrait, 1645"

This Rembrandt self portrait once hung in the museum of Harry Ettlinger's — the last surviving Monuments Men— old home town of Karlsruhe, in the south-west of Germany. In fact, Ettlinger still remembers when he found the painting in the salt mines of Heilbronn after the war.

Today, the World War II veteran now has a print of the painting hanging in his living room. "It reminds me of what we achieved and the sacrifices that people like my buddies made,"he told the Mirror. The real painting has been returned to the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe is the State Art Gallery in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Florence's Medieval Architecture

After the liberation of Florence, all of the city's bridges were mined and destroyed by the retreating German forces, including the medieval Ponte alla Carraia and Ponte alle Grazie, as well as the Renaissance era Ponte Santa Trinita.

The only medieval vestiges of the city that survived were the famous Ponte Vecchio bridge (rumored to have been saved by the express wishes of Hitler) as well as the nearby Torre degli Amidei. The medieval tower was shored up, and rubble was cleared away from the Ponte Vecchio. Both stand to this day.

SEE ALSO: 23 Recent Works Of Art That Shook History

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If you're looking for a cool place to work, few can top the biggest names in tech.

Companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft have built massive campuses with their own cafeterias, gyms, game rooms, and even areas where you can get some alone time or take a nap.

But software maker Adobe has something those giants don't: a building that just so happens to be a historic landmark in downtown San Francisco.

As detailed in the post on the company's blog, Adobe's main office in San Francisco is in the famous Baker & Hamilton building, a warehouse built almost a century ago. A landmark on the National Registry of Historic Places, the building "is the last remaining piece of an industrial and commercial complex important in the development of San Francisco and the West." 

The Baker-Hamilton building began construction in 1904, was completed in 1905, and miraculously survived the major earthquake and fires of 1906. The original owner's sign is still there.

Adobe doesn't detract from the sense of history. Its sign is much smaller and only noticeable near the entrance.

Building your office into an old warehouse has its perks. The first thing you notice is how much space there is everywhere.

A Reddit user called shystone combined Google Street Views of London with famous 18th and 19th century paintings to create highly unique then-and-now images (via My Modern Met and/r/London).

Shystone layered the paintings on top of the Google Street View images, at times allowing modern cars, statues, and architecture to poke through the painting.

Take a look at how much London has changed below.

"Northumberland House" by Italian painter Canaletto (1752)

"On the South end of Trafalgar Square this huge townhouse stood from 1605 right up to 1874 when it was demolished after compulsorily purchase by Government to make way for a new road," shystone said. "There's a Waterstones on the corner now under an old hotel building."

"Blackman Street London" by British artist John Atkinson Grimshaw (1885)

"The church is St. George The Martyr," shystone said. "Today The Shard is the biggest spire you'll see looking North East up Borough Highstreet."

"The 9th of November, 1888" by English painter William Logsdail (1890)

"[The] Lord Mayor's Procession passing through Bank Junction," according to shystone. "To the left The Old Bank of England — somewhat underwhelmingly, the worlds eighth oldest bank — less than 50 years away from demolition. The Greatest Architectural Crime of the 20th Century in the City of London."

"View of The Grand Walk" by Italian painter Canaletto (1751)

"The Pleasure Gardens in Vauxhall were a big deal in the 1600s," shystone said. "There was music and live entertainment and hot air balloons! Picking up hookers and working boys too by the time this was painted. Better for gay clubbing these days if that's your bag."

"A View of Greenwich from the River" by Italian painter Canaletto (1750-2)

"Greenwich unchanged as ever, minus a few of the sail boats," according to shystone.

"Covent Garden Market" by English painter Balthazar Nebot (1737)

"When this square was originally built in the 1660s it was the first open piazza of its type in London," shystone said. "Pretty famous as a red light district by the time this was painted. Today this view east towards St. Pauls Church is taken up by the Market Hall that got built in 1830."

"St Martins in the Fields" by English painter William Logsdail (1888)

"On the other side of Trafalgar Square is St. Martin's in the Fields," according to shystone. "Not as old as Northumberland House but there's been a church on the site for at least 800 years. You see locals doing Tai Chi at lunchtime in the courtyard over the crypt when the weather is nice."

The River Thames with "St. Paul's Cathedral on Lord Mayor's Day" by Italian painter Canaletto (1746)

"The Millennium Bridge cuts across this patch of the river now," shystone explained. "You still get a great view of St. Pauls from the South side of the river, but in 1746 — only 40 years since they finished building it — it must have totally dominated London's skyline; It was our city's tallest building for over 300 years!"

Westminster Abbey with a "Procession of Knights of the Bath" by Italian painter Canaletto (1749)

"This view hints at the less developed (and less painted) riverfront behind the Abbey the Knights are heading down to," shystone said. "In 1749 Westminster Palace as we see it today wasn't built yet, No Big Ben keyring for Canaletto. Members of Parliament were still using the Abbey's Chapter House to have Commons meetings."

"The Strand Looking East from Exeter Exchange" by an unknown artist (1822)

"The Strand has changed massively since this painting of St. Mary Le Strand," according to shystone. "It was half demolished and widened in 1900 removing all the pokey alleyways and narrow residential roads to the North side. Even the church is a replacement for another one demolished to make way for Somerset House. In 1822 all the roads on the right would have still led right down into the Thames before the embankment was constructed.

"Most of those buildings are gone, but some of the roads remain and retain their slope down towards the old Thames riverbank. On Villers St., the riverbank came right up to where Gordon's Wine Bar is."

SEE ALSO: 20 Pictures Of London Street Life In The 1870s

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The dollar bill, with its many symbols and prominent portrait of George has had a rich history. Learn where our paper money came from. 

Produced by Justin Gmoser

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Last night's "Cosmos" premiere was mostly well-received with the exception of one glaring issue: The history of Giordano Bruno.

Giordano Bruno was portrayed in the show as the first man to think of the idea of an infinite universe. He stood up to the Catholic Church during the Inquisition and ended up being burnt at the stake for his thoughts.

Here's a short clip from the show, from Hulu:

While we can't completely fault the creators of "Cosmos" for romanticizing and simplifying the history of Bruno, there are some real facts that might make you see the segment in a new light, courtesy of Discover blogger Corey Powell:

1) The idea of infinite space originated a century before Bruno, with the German philosopher Nicolas of Cusa.

2) Bruno wasn't a scientist. According to Powell, "his interests were theological, not physical, and his astronomical writings are considered amateurish and confused."

3) His writings were mostly theological in nature — and he was using them to push his own theology (set against the Catholic church). That simple fact was the real reason he was burnt at the stake.

4) The church listed eight charges against Bruno during his trial, and only one of these was related to his astronomical guesses. According to Powell, "the others involved denying the divinity of Jesus, denying the virgin birth, denying transubstantiation, practicing magic, and believing that animals and objects (including the Earth) possessed souls."

5) Unlike how he is portrayed in the "Cosmos" animation, Bruno didn't spend his life poor or alone. He was well-funded, and held positions as a professor.

6) Bruno's wandering ways are more likely the result of his temperament than his cosmological ideas — he's described as "argumentative, sarcastic, and drawn to controversy."

Find out what astronomer Powell thinks was skipped over (Spoiler: it's not Galileo OR Copernicus) »

SEE ALSO: Neil deGrasse Tyson Describes His Life-Changing First Encounter With Carl Sagan

SEE ALSO: Here's The Mind-Blowing Cosmic Calendar From The 'Cosmos' Premiere

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Mathematics is all around us, and it has shaped our understanding of the world in countless ways.

In 2013, mathematician and science author Ian Stewart published a book on 17 Equations That Changed The World. We recently came across this convenient table on Dr. Paul Coxon's twitter account by mathematics tutor and blogger Larry Phillips that summarizes the equations. (Our explanation of each is below):

Here is a little bit more about these wonderful equations that have shaped mathematics and human history:

1) The Pythagorean Theorem: This theorem is foundational to our understanding of geometry. It describes the relationship between the sides of a right triangle on a flat plane: square the lengths of the short sides, a and b, add those together, and you get the square of the length of the long side, c.

This relationship, in some ways, actually distinguishes our normal, flat, Euclidean geometry from curved, non-Euclidean geometry. For example, a right triangle drawn on the surface of a sphere need not follow the Pythagorean theorem.

2) Logarithms: Logarithms are the inverses, or opposites, of exponential functions. A logarithm for a particular base tells you what power you need to raise that base to to get a number. For example, the base 10 logarithm of 1 is log(1) = 0, since 1 = 10⁰; log(10) = 1, since 10 = 10¹; and log(100) = 2, since 100 = 10².

The equation in the graphic, log(ab) = log(a) + log(b), shows one of the most useful applications of logarithms: they turn multiplication into addition.

Until the development of the digital computer, this was the most common way to quickly multiply together large numbers, greatly speeding up calculations in physics, astronomy, and engineering. 

3) Calculus: The formula given here is the definition of the derivative in calculus. The derivative measures the rate at which a quantity is changing. For example, we can think of velocity, or speed, as being the derivative of position — if you are walking at 3 miles per hour, then every hour, you have changed your position by 3 miles.

Naturally, much of science is interested in understanding how things change, and the derivative and the integral — the other foundation of calculus — sit at the heart of how mathematicians and scientists understand change.

4) Law of Gravity: Newton's law of gravitation describes the force of gravity between two objects, F, in terms of a universal constant, G, the masses of the two objects, m₁ and m₂, and the distance between the objects, r. Newton's law is a remarkable piece of scientific history — it explains, almost perfectly, why the planets move in the way they do. Also remarkable is its universal nature — this is not just how gravity works on Earth, or in our solar system, but anywhere in the universe.

Newton's gravity held up very well for two hundred years, and it was not until Einstein's theory of general relativity that it would be replaced.

5) The square root of -1: Mathematicians have always been expanding the idea of what numbers actually are, going from natural numbers, to negative numbers, to fractions, to the real numbers. The square root of -1, usually written i, completes this process, giving rise to the complex numbers.

Mathematically, the complex numbers are supremely elegant. Algebra works perfectly the way we want it to — any equation has a complex number solution, a situation that is not true for the real numbers : x² + 4 = 0 has no real number solution, but it does have a complex solution: the square root of -2. Calculus can be extended to the complex numbers, and by doing so, we find some amazing symmetries and properties of these numbers. Those properties make the complex numbers essential in electronics and signal processing.

6) Euler's Polyhedra Formula: Polyhedra are the three-dimensional versions of polygons, like the cube to the right. The corners of a polyhedron are called its vertices, the lines connecting the vertices are its edges, and the polygons covering it are its faces.

A cube has 8 vertices, 12 edges, and 6 faces. If I add the vertices and faces together, and subtract the edges, I get 8 + 6 - 12 = 2.

Euler's formula states that, as long as your polyhedron is somewhat well behaved, if you add the vertices and faces together, and subtract the edges, you will always get 2. This will be true whether your polyhedron has 4, 8, 12, 20, or any number of faces.

Euler's observation was one of the first examples of what is now called a topological invariant — some number or property shared by a class of shapes that are similar to each other. The entire class of "well-behaved" polyhedra will have V + F - E = 2. This observation, along with with Euler's solution to the Bridges of Konigsburg problem, paved the way to the development of topology, a branch of math essential to modern physics.

7) Normal distribution: The normal probability distribution, which has the familiar bell curve graph to the left, is ubiquitous in statistics.

The normal curve is used in physics, biology, and the social sciences to model various properties. One of the reasons the normal curve shows up so often is that it describes the behavior of large groups of independent processes.

8) Wave Equation: This is a differential equation, or an equation that describes how a property is changing through time in terms of that property's derivative, as above. The wave equation describes the behavior of waves — a vibrating guitar string, ripples in a pond after a stone is thrown, or light coming out of an incandescent bulb. The wave equation was an early differential equation, and the techniques developed to solve the equation opened the door to understanding other differential equations as well.

9) Fourier Transform: The Fourier transform is essential to understanding more complex wave structures, like human speech. Given a complicated, messy wave function like a recording of a person talking, the Fourier transform allows us to break the messy function into a combination of a number of simple waves, greatly simplifying analysis.

 The Fourier transform is at the heart of modern signal processing and analysis, and data compression. 

10) Navier-Stokes Equations: Like the wave equation, this is a differential equation. The Navier-Stokes equations describes the behavior of flowing fluids — water moving through a pipe, air flow over an airplane wing, or smoke rising from a cigarette. While we have approximate solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations that allow computers to simulate fluid motion fairly well, it is still an open question (with a million dollar prize) whether it is possible to construct mathematically exact solutions to the equations.

11) Maxwell's Equations: This set of four differential equations describes the behavior of and relationship between electricity (E) and magnetism (H).

Maxwell's equations are to classical electromagnetism as Newton's laws of motion and law of universal gravitation are to classical mechanics — they are the foundation of our explanation of how electromagnetism works on a day to day scale. As we will see, however, modern physics relies on a quantum mechanical explanation of electromagnetism, and it is now clear that these elegant equations are just an approximation that works well on human scales.

12) Second Law of Thermodynamics: This states that, in a closed system, entropy (S) is always steady or increasing. Thermodynamic entropy is, roughly speaking, a measure of how disordered a system is. A system that starts out in an ordered, uneven state — say, a hot region next to a cold region — will always tend to even out, with heat flowing from the hot area to the cold area until evenly distributed.

The second law of thermodynamics is one of the few cases in physics where time matters in this way. Most physical processes are reversible — we can run the equations backwards without messing things up. The second law, however, only runs in this direction. If we put an ice cube in a cup of hot coffee, we always see the ice cube melt, and never see the coffee freeze.

13) Relativity: Einstein radically altered the course of physics with his theories of special and general relativity. The classic equation E = mc² states that matter and energy are equivalent to each other. Special relativity brought in ideas like the speed of light being a universal speed limit and the passage of time being different for people moving at different speeds.

General relativity describes gravity as a curving and folding of space and time themselves, and was the first major change to our understanding of gravity since Newton's law. General relativity is essential to our understanding of the origins, structure, and ultimate fate of the universe.

14) Schrodinger's Equation: This is the main equation in quantum mechanics. As general relativity explains our universe at its largest scales, this equation governs the behavior of atoms and subatomic particles.

Modern quantum mechanics and general relativity are the two most successful scientific theories in history — all of the experimental observations we have made to date are entirely consistent with their predictions. Quantum mechanics is also necessary for most modern technology — nuclear power, semiconductor-based computers, and lasers are all built around quantum phenomena.

15) Information Theory: The equation given here is for Shannon information entropy. As with the thermodynamic entropy given above, this is a measure of disorder. In this case, it measures the information content of a message — a book, a JPEG picture sent on the internet, or anything that can be represented symbolically. The Shannon entropy of a message represents a lower bound on how much that message can be compressed without losing some of its content.

Shannon's entropy measure launched the mathematical study of information, and his results are central to how we communicate over networks today.

16) Chaos Theory: This equation is May's logistic map. It describes a process evolving through time — x_t+1, the level of some quantity x in the next time period — is given by the formula on the right, and it depends on x_t, the level of x right now. k is a chosen constant. For certain values of k, the map shows chaotic behavior: if we start at some particular initial value of x, the process will evolve one way, but if we start at another initial value, even one very very close to the first value, the process will evolve a completely different way.

We see chaotic behavior — behavior sensitive to initial conditions — like this in many areas. Weather is a classic example — a small change in atmospheric conditions on one day can lead to completely different weather systems a few days later, most commonly captured in the idea of a butterfly flapping its wings on one continent causing a hurricane on another continent. 

17) Black-Scholes Equation: Another differential equation, Black-Scholes describes how finance experts and traders find prices for derivatives. Derivatives — financial products based on some underlying asset, like a stock — are a major part of the modern financial system.

The Black-Scholes equation allows financial professionals to calculate the value of these financial products, based on the properties of the derivative and the underlying asset.

NOW WATCH: Here's How Much Soda You Have To Drink To Make It Worth Buying Your Own SodaStream

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Almost exactly 22 years ago, researcher Nathaniel Borenstein sent his colleagues the world's first-ever email attachment:

This adorable photo of his barbershop quartet, The Telephone Chords. 

The extension that Borenstein and his fellow researcher, Ned Freed, wrote  back in 1992 (called Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension) is still used for every email attachment today.

They created it because Borenstein said that he one day dreamed of being able to receive pictures of his grandchildren over email.  

Head over to Quartz for a Q&A with Borenstein about Bitcoin and security, in honor of the web's 25th birthday. 

SEE ALSO: Yelp's Best Reviewer Is Chronicling His Love Life Through His Posts And It's Completely Compelling

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Today researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center For Astrophysics announced the first data that shows the inflation theory of the Big Bang is correct.

That theory dates back to 1978, and was first developed by Alan Guth. The New York Times recounts: "One night late in 1979, an itinerant young physicist named Alan Guth, with a new son and a year’s appointment at Stanford, stayed up late with his notebook and equations, venturing far beyond the world of known physics."

SLAC labs tweeted this notebook page, which seems to be Guth's notebook from the time. Here's the tweet:

In 1978 Alan Guth, then a @SLAClab postdoc, wrote this notebook page. His eureka moment confirmed today by #BICEP2. pic.twitter.com/Ve3Y3cjcCj

— SLAC (@SLAClab) March 17, 2014

The story

As the notebook says, Guth was trying to explain why there is no trace of exotic particles — magnetic monopoles to be exact — we should see from the Big Bang.

These magnetic monopoles are absent from the universe as we know it, and Guth suggested that supercooling of the universe could be why. But when he introduced this supercooling into the calculations for the big bang and expansion of the universe, he found something incredible — inflation.

In fact, supercooling does "affect the expansion rate of the universe enormously," Guth told the MIT Tech Review, "sending the universe into this exponential expansion, which is what we now call inflation."

The notebook, written when Guth was a postdoc at Cornell in 1978, reads, in part:

SPECTACULAR REALIZATION:

This kind of supercooling can explain why the universe today is so incredibly flat _ and therefore result the fine-tuning paradox pointed out by Bob Dicke in the Einstein dry lectures.

A developing theory

At Stanford University in 1981, Guth formally proposed the idea of cosmic inflation — that the nascent universe passed through a phase of exponential expansion.

But, he knew there were problems with it. "He wrote a paper saying, I think this is a very important idea, but I can show it doesn't work in the form I am proposing,'" Michael Turner, a University of Chicago astrophysicist, told MIT's Technology Review. "He invited other scientists to think about inflation and improve it."

His initial idea was supplemented by the theories of many others, including the idea of "chaotic inflation" introduced in 1983 by Andre Linde, also of Stanford University.Today, the first experimental evidence of inflation was announced, the beginning of the confirmation of Guth's theory.

SEE ALSO: Astrophysicists Announce Major Discovery Of Big Bang's Smoking Gun

SEE ALSO: Here's The Touching Moment A Leading Physicist Hears The News That His Inflation Theory Was Right

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We could all be dinosaurs. The Economist predicts that robots are going to replace telemarketers, accountants, and retail workers, and Bill Gates says software bots will take even more jobs.

This isn’t the first time that whole swaths of the labor market have gone extinct: The Industrial Revolution did away with gigs that your great-great-grandparents might have had that sound preposterous to us today.

Based on the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s occupational classification list from 1850 and some research of our own, we found several bizarre-sounding occupations that are now totally extinct. 

Additional reporting by Vivian Giang. 

"Computer" used to be somebody's title. Before electronics took over, these workers — usually women — would convert figures and crunch other numbers by hand.

Factory workers needed a little entertainment, so a lector read news and literature aloud to them.

Before everyone had refrigerators, milk quickly went bad. So you'd need it delivered regularly by your milkman. With home refrigeration, this profession disappeared.