On July 2, 1937 an aircraft disappeared over the Pacific ocean. Speculation as to what happened to that aircraft has been the subject of public attention, and more than a thousand books, since. But, lost in all the discussion, is that there were two pioneering aviators aboard that Lockheed Electra that never made its scheduled landing at tiny Howland island, and arguably the one most important to the field of aviation has somehow become merely a footnote.
One of the great questions of antiquity is what ancient knowledge might have been lost with the destruction of the famed Great Library of Alexandria. We can only guess at the answer, but the question itself reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the library- what it was, where it was, why its was, and what happened to it.
In the US alone souvenir shops sold more than 21 billion dollars of merchandise in 2022. It is human nature to try and preserve memories, and one of the many ways we do that is to purchase keepsakes, mementos, or souvenirs - that remind us of where we’ve been. And evidence of that human instinct goes way back, well before anyone “exited through the gift shop”.