“White,” of course, is a a social designation. The question really is, “Why are northern Europeans depigmented?” Here is a map of human skin tone. The natives of northern Europe are oddly light-skinned. They are paler than anyone else on earth.

Most people know that it has something to do with sunlight, UV, latitude, and vitamin D. Here is a map of solar UV at the surface taken from satellite. It matches the skin-tone map everywhere but Europe.

Read the entire article as it traces development back step by step to figure out why Northern Europe is unique in its depigmentation.

Props Master, Eric Hart, has an introduction to furniture with a number of useful links for European influenced furniture.

Preliminary data from a dramatic experiment on the moon “indicates the mission successfully uncovered water in a permanently shadowed lunar crater,” NASA said in a statement.

“The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon,” it added, as ecstatic scientists celebrated the landmark discovery.

Read the full article for more details. Our question is: How many science-fiction books and stories have just become out-dated, do you think?

via Brandie Tarvin

Besides the photos, there’s also a collection of primary documents that document the course of the war via source – often official government – material.

Some of the archive documents were asigned in the late 1830s and bore relevance to the outbreak of war some 75 years later. There are memos, letters, treaties and the text of speeches throughout the war and beyond.

Thanks to Daniel Poeira for the link

Behind the Name.com is searchable by nationality, first letter, gender, or meaning.  Make sure you check out their Surname area as well.

Surnames from Old English – Useful for historical fiction, but also because it translates the names, offering structure ideas for names in secondary worlds.

List of most common surnames – Exactly what it sounds like. This is handy if you want to strongly identify someone as being from a particular place or if you want to avoid the obvious choices.

Random Name Generator – The random name generator will create a list of male or female names from the U.S. Census. You can set the obscurity level you’d like the list to be.

Everchanging Book of Names – This shareware program creates names based on naming patterns, for instance if you wanted a name that sounds Icelandic, but isn’t a real name.  You can also create your own “chapters” and define the parameters for alien names.

Your Spam Box – Why not do something useful with all that spam?  Random combinations ranging from Raymondo Zuniga to Rosemary Hart are just waiting for you.

Check out the Google News Timeline, as a quick place to start your search.  It  will either save you countless hours of research or suck you into hours of distraction.  What’s particularly handy about it is that you can see what happens on the days or weeks on either side of the even you are looking for. This is useful in setting your context or avoiding blunders.