history

This beer is Allsopp's Arctic Ale, brewed for an arctic expedition that failed in 1875. An auctioneer selling the beer told the BBC that in researching the beer he found it would most likely be "sweet tasting with a hint of tobacco," based on a similar beer that was opened and tasted.  

Modern-day athletes often nurse their muscles with supplement shakes or chocolate milk after a workout. Similarly, gladiators, the sports stars of the Roman Empire, may have guzzled a drink made from the ashes of charred plants — a rich source of calcium, which is essential for building bones, researchers report this month in the journal PLOS One.

"Plant ashes were evidently consumed to fortify the body after physical exertion, and to promote better bone healing," Fabian Kanz, a forensic anthropologist at the Medical University of Vienna who led the research, said in a statement. "Things were similar then to what we do today."

Today's Google Doodle is in memory of the 19th century scientist Léon Foucault, who helped us show how the world spins.

Jean Bernard Léon Foucault was born in Paris in 1819. While Foucault received a medical education, the profession did not quite suit him. The young doctor is said to have a distaste for bloody medical dissections. But Foucault was brilliant when it came to making models, tools, and devices.
And Foucault's craftsmanship came in handy.
Foucault and a series of teachers, bosses, and partners tackled many scientific questions by building contraptions that could make hard-to-grasp phenomena more tangible. Foucault was able to measure the speed of light. He improved the daguerreotype, an early form of photography. He found a way to prove that light is a wave, not a beam of particles. He named the gyroscope, a stabilizing tool found in everything from toys to the International Space Station.

Pretty sure WWII went a little differently than this...