Travels in the Knowledge Web:

Wallpaper to Germ Theory

Wallpaper – Once papermaking was automated in the early nineteenth century, wallpaper became a major fashion accessory for middle class homes. Wallpaper with ‘country’ motifs was all the rage, thanks to the work of designer… William Morris – Founder of the Arts and Crafts movement, member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of ‘get-back-to the-Middle-Ages’ artists like Rossetti and Burne-Jones. Morris also founded the Socialist League (members included Marx’s daughter Eleanor, and George Bernard Shaw). He influenced HG Wells and was influenced (in social matters) by… John Ruskin – Major Victorian art-architecture critic, his 1851 ‘Stones of Venice’ was a bestseller. He promoted the Gothic Revival and his wife left him for painter Millais. Ruskin knew everybody in the art and literature world, and was sued for defamation by Whistler. He protested against the London Zoo sale of an elephant to… PT Barnum – ‘Prince of Humbug,’ he was the first great showman and went on, from flea-and-freak shows, to pioneer the modern circus (Barnum and Bailey), playing to audiences all over America and Europe (Queen Victoria loved him). His career as a promoter reached a high with his sell-out 1849 American Tour of… Jenny Lind – The ‘Swedish Nightingale,’ greatest opera singer of her day. Said to be able to hold a note for sixty seconds, she was a pal of such as Chopin, Schumann and Mendelssohn (who fell for her high F sharp) and favourite of European royalty. One besotted admirer (unrequited) was Danish scribbler… Hans Christian Andersen – Famous bisexual Danish writer of fairy tales such as ‘The Ugly Duckling.’ He was a good pal of electromagnetism discoverer Hans Oersted. He also had a morbid fear of dogs and travelled all over Europe, meeting such as Cherubini, Dickens, Hugo, Dumas, De Vigny, and self-styled ‘Great Lover’… Alphonse de Lamartine – Big Romantic poet and helper of the fleeing Napoleon (after the latter’s escape from Elba). After the 1848 Revolution (in which we was a leading revolutionary light) Lamartine briefly became French Foreign Minister in the Provisional Government. He said constant love-making was essential for his poetry. He was painted on a Paris ceiling by… Fernand Cormon – By age 28, famous for giant historical paintings. As a well-respected art teacher, in 1882 he taught none other than Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh. He threw Matisse out of class. In 1911 (on that ceiling: the Petit Palais), he also painted major figures including Victor Hugo, Marie Curie and… Louis Pasteur – Professor of Chemistry who discovered what made wine go bad, milk sour, and food rotten. This could be prevented by heating to boiling point (a process now known as ‘pasteurization.’) After the experiment proving that putrefaction happened due to microorganisms in the air, Pasteur’s idea became known as the…