History
Musca, under its original name Apis – the Bee, was introduced in the late 16th century by Petrus Plancius to fill the previously uncharted area around the southern pole and to provide nourishment for the nearby constellation Chamaeleon (17th-century celestial maps clearly show the chameleon's tongue trying to catch the insect). In 1752 Nicolas Louis de Lacaille renamed it to Musca Australis, the Southern Fly – Australis, since it counterparted the now discarded constellation of Musca Borealis composed of a few stars in Aries, and to avoid confusion with Apus. Today the name is simply Musca.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)