Mary Somerville

Published Nov 8, 2023, 2:00 PM

Mary Somerville was dubbed the Queen of Science, a title earned through a lifetime of learning all she could about various math and science subjects and then parsing those concepts out in her writing for more general audiences.

Research:

  • Collins, Helen. “Mary Somerville: Her Legacy for Women in Science.” Oxford Scientist. Feb. 11, 2022. https://oxsci.org/mary-somerville-her-legacy-for-women-in-science/
  • Gregersen, Erik. "Mary Somerville". Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Dec. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Somerville
  • Neeley, Kathryn A. “Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind.” Cambridge University Press. 2001.
  • Somerville, Mary. “On the magnetizing power of the more refrangible solar rays.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. December 31, 1833. Volume 2. Accessed online: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspl.1815.0282
  • Somerville, Mary. “Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville.” John Murray, London. 1872. Accessed online: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/27747/pg27747-images.html
  • Somerville, Mary. “On Molecular and Microscopic Science.” John Murray. London. 1869. Accessed online: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/55886/pg55886-images.html
  • Uri, John. “175 Years Ago: Astronomers Discover Neptune, the Eighth Planet.” NASA. Sept. 21, 2021. https://www.nasa.gov/history/175-years-ago-astronomers-discover-neptune-the-eighth-planet/#:~:text=On%20the%20night%20of%20Sept,orbit%20of%20the%20planet%20Uranus.
  • Wills, Matthew. “Mary Somerville, Queen of 19th Century Science.” JSTOR Daily. March 2, 2016. https://daily.jstor.org/mary-somerville-queen-of-19th-century-science/
  • Lewis, Jone Johnson. "Biography of Mary Somerville, Mathematician, Scientist, and Writer." ThoughtCo, Apr. 5, 2023, thoughtco.com/mary-somerville-biography-3530354.

 

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Mary Somerville was dubbed the Queen of Science in her obituary in The Morning Post in eighteen seventy two, and she had earned that title through a lifetime of learning all that she could about various math and science subjects, which was a lot, and then parsing those concepts out in her writing for more general audiences as well as scholars. And she completely fascinates me because she's one of those topics that touches so many others that we have talked about on the show. It is a little surprising she isn't a more well known historical figure or that she hasn't been mentioned on our show over and over. Like I literally had a moment doing Researcher. I was like, am I being punks? Is this all April fool stuff? This isn't a real person, because how could she have been as involved with all of these luminaries and not be more prominent in the historical discussion of math and science. I had more of a repeatedly second guessing, like, did we do that? Did we do it? I did that? Also? Yeah? Yeah, And I really really like her, And while her life certainly had its sorrows, her story is overall not a bummer in my opinion. So it seemed like a good antidote to some of the darker stuff that I have been pursuing as of late. If our Halloween show really bummed you out, is a good off ramp from that, you're gonna have a much better time. So. She was born Mary Fairfax on December twenty sixth, seventeen eighty in Jedburgh, Roxburghshire, Scotland. She was the daughter of Admiral Sir William George Fairfax and Mary Chamber Fairfax, and was one of seven children. Four of those children lived to adulthood. Because of my father was away at sea a lot, her mother really ran the household and as a little girl, Mary was taught to read by her mother, but like a lot of girls at the time, she didn't receive formal education. As a small child, she was lonely and interested in the outdoors from an early age, and she later recounted quote, I never cared for dolls and had no one to play with me. I amused myself in the garden, which was much frequented by birds. I knew most of them, their flight and their habits. I love this, It's so charming. Mary went to a boarding school for a year when she was ten, and this year of education was largely due to her father having returned from time at sea to find her without much basic knowledge. It seems like he felt her mom had fallen down on the job of her home education a little bit. Fairfax said of his daughter, quote, this kind of life will never do. Mary must at least know how to write and keep accounts. When her year at school, which she hated, was completed, and by completed it seems like she might have been invited to leave, she set out on a journey of self education, devouring whatever books she could get her hands on. But some of this, she would later write, was out of shame, because when she returned home she realized that she was still unable to write well enough to answer even simple notes sent by neighbors, and at one point she had sent her brother a letter with misspellings that got her chastised for wasting her parents' money for that time in schooling that apparently achieved nothing, and she wrote of this event quote, this passed over, and I was like a wild animal escaped out of a cage. She was interested in everything around her. She had just not done well in the structured school setting. Her uncle, Reverend Thomas Somerville, who was one of the few adults to understand her simultaneous disdain for formal schooling and her deep desire for knowledge, helped her by teaching her Latin. In the winter that Mary turned thirteen, her mother took an apartment in Edinburgh. Her father was once again away, and she sent Mary to a writing school to improve her handwriting and also to learn some basic math. She later took Pianoforte lessons, and she went to dancing school, and she also took up painting. Mary's curiosity about higher math was sparked in a pretty unusual way. She told this story later in her life. This way quote, I was often invited with my mother to the tea parties given either by widows or maiden ladies who resided at Burnt Island. A pool of commerce used to be keenly contested till a late hour at these parties, which bored me exceedingly, But I there became acquainted with a missus Ogilvy, much younger than the rest, who asked me to go and see fancy works she was doing, and at which she was very clever. I went the next day, and after admiring her work and being told how it was done, she showed me a monthly Mas magazine with colored plates of ladies' dresses, charades, and puzzles. At the end of a page, I read what appeared to me to be simply an arithmetical question, But on turning the page, I was surprised to see strange looking lines mixed with letters, chiefly x'es and y's, and asked, what is that? Oh, said miss Ogilvie. It is a kind of arithmetic. They call it algebra. But I can tell you nothing about it. And we talked about other things, But on going home, I thought I would look if any of our books can tell me what was meant by algebra. So while she struggled initially to find books that would answer her questions or find anybody who would explain this to her, this really set Mary down a path of just self propelled academic rigor, as she kept trying to take in every bit of information she could find to achieve understanding. When Mary was twenty four, she married a distant cousin, Samuel Gregg. Samuel didn't exactly hamper Mary's efforts at learning, but he didn't support them either. She wrote later that quote, he had a very low opinion of the capacity of my sex. So it seems like Samuel just thought of her efforts at constantly learning as kind of a quaint hobby. In general, this marriage did not seem to be a particularly joyous union. Samuel had just a small bachelor home in London, which Mary did not like, and they didn't have much in common, so she spent a lot of her days walking alone and studying mathematics. The one thing that she said she loved about her new life in London was seeing the Italian opera for the first time. Samuel and Mary had two children together, but their marriage was brief, and there's also a bit of a gap in information about their second child. Their first son, Varnsov Greeg, grew up to be a barrister, but their second son died in childhood, and it was really hard for Holly to find anything about him, even his name. Samuel died in eighteen oh seven, which meant Mary was a twenty seven year old widow and mother. The second son was still alive at that point, and her own account indicated that she moved with her two children back into her father's home and was nursing her youngest. During her time back in Scotland, she started studying, according to her account, spherical trigonometry, conic sections, and Newton's Principia. She struggled with Principia, of which she wrote, quote, I found it extremely difficult and certainly did not understand it till I returned to it sometime after when I studied that wonderful work with great assiduity and wrote numerous notes and observations on it. For the next five years, Mary's study focused primarily on mathematics. She described getting a list of mathematics books from a professor at the University of Edinburgh to make herself a comprehensive course on the subject, and bought everyone, which she referred to as an excellent little library. Her writing about this acquisition and the way her days played out as she studied it, reveals a lot about her personality. Quote I could hardly believe that I possessed such a treasure. When I looked back on the day that I first saw the mysterious word algebra, and the long course of years in which I had persevered almost without hope, it taught me never to despair. I had now the means and pursued my studies with increased assiduity. Concealment was no longer possible, nor was it attempted. I was considered eccentric and foolish, and my conduct was highly disapproved of by many, especially by some members of my own family. They expected me to entertain and keep a gay house for them, and in that they were disappointed. As I was quite independent. I did not care for their criticism. A great part of the day I was occupied with my children. In the evening, I worked, played piquet with my father, or played on the piano, sometimes with violent accompaniment. This work in mathematics paid off. In eighteen eleven, Mary submitted a solution to a published problem in the journal The Mathematical Repository and won a second place medal for her solution. Mary remarried in eighteen twelve, this time to William Somerville, who was another cousin, and the son of her uncle, Reverend Thomas Somerville, to whom she had been close all her life. She was actually born in Thomas Somerville's house. William worked for the Army's medical department, and unlike her first husband, he was very supportive of her and her studies. William and Mary's daughter Martha later wrote of her father quote, his love and admiration for her were unbounded. He frankly and willingly acknowledged her superiority to himself, and many of our friends can bear witness to the honest pride and gratification which he always testified in the fame and honors she attained. While Mary's husband and her father in law were very in favor of her intellectual pres suits, that wasn't true of the entire Somerville family, and this really led particularly to some harsh letters back and forth between William and his sisters. They would say Mary was doing things she should not, and William was basically like, shut up in mind your business. Family squabbles aside, the Summerville seemed to have been a very good match for one another, and we will talk more about their life together and Mary's first forays into scientific publishing after we pause for a sponsor break. In eighteen sixteen, Mary and William moved to London for William's work. The couple already had two daughters when they moved. Margaret was born in eighteen thirteen, so the year after they got married, and Martha was born. In eighteen fifteen. In London, their third daughter, Mary Charlotte, was born. The couple did have one other child, a son, who died as a baby. During their time in London, they met a lot of notable intellectuals of the time. William was made a fellow of the Royal Society, and he brought Mary with him to lectures, and there they met Charles Babbage and John Herschel, among others. Mary also became Ada Byron's private tutor when Ada was young, and they became good friends as she grew up. And it was actually through the Summervilles that Ada met Charles Babbage when she was eighteen. The Summerville's daughter, Margaret, died in eighteen twenty three at the age of ten. Mary wrote of this moment late in her life, quote, the illness and death of our eldest threw Somerville and me into the deepest affliction. She was a child of intelligence and acquirements far beyond her tender age. Soon after, William was given a position at Chelsea Hospital and the family moved to Chelsea to be close to his work. This was really when their close relationship with Lady Byron and her daughter Ada began. And from the time she was a child, Ada was close with Mary and would often stay at the Summerville home. Yeah. Mary almost seems like I don't know if I would say a second mother, but probably pretty close. Like Ada would just spend like the week at their house because she loved it there so much. In eighteen twenty six, Mary's first paper was read at the Royal Society That was on the magnetizing power of the more refrangible solar rays, so you know, very light stuff. In it, she described her own experiments that she had conducted in magnetism, writing quote. In the year eighteen thirteen, Professor Morrichini of Rome announced that steel exposed in a particular manner to the concentrated violet rays of the prismatic spectrum becomes magnetic. His experiments, however, having uniformly failed in other hands, had ceased to excite general attention, especially in this country, whose climate is usually so unfavorable for such researches. The unusual clearness of weather last summer, however, induced Missus Somerville to make the attempt, Having at that time no information of the manner in which Professor Morrikini's experiments were conducted. It occurred to her, however, as unlikely that if the whole of a needle were equally exposed to the violet rays, the same influence should at the same time produce a south pole at one end and a north at the other of it. She therefore covered half of a slender sewing needle an inch long with paper and fixed it in such a manner as to expose the uncovered part to the violet rays of a spectrum thrown by an equi angular prism of flint glass on a panel at five feet distance. As the place of the spectrum shifted, the needle was moved so as to keep the exposed part constantly in the violet ray, the sun being bright. In less than two hours, the needle, which before the experiment showed no signs of polarity, had become magnetic, the exposed end attracting the south pole of a suspended magnetic needle and repelling the north. No iron was near to disturb the experiment, which was repeated did the same day under similar circumstances, with a view to detect any source of fallacy in the first attempt, but with the same result. Just as in Aside, she does write about herself in the third person here, but this is her paper. That's that It happens a lot in this era. I feel like The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was founded the same year Mary's paper, published by Henry Brahm. The goal of the society was to make information available and understandable to the masses, and Mary was asked to help. Bram wanted her to create a condensed English language version of Pierre Simol Laplace's work on the Solar system celestial mechanics. Mary took on this challenging job, but at first she was reluctant. Her account of the request when, as follows quote, I thought Lord Bram must have been mistaken with regard to my acquirements, and naturally concluded that my self acquired knowledge was so far inferior to that of the men who had been educated in our universities that it would be the height of presumption to attempt to write on such a subject, or indeed on any other. A few days after this, Lord Brahm came to Chelsea himself, and Somerville joined with him in urging me at least to make the attempt. It took Mary four years to complete this adaptation. Unfortunately, her version wasn't condensed enough for Brom He still thought it was just a too much book for a mass market publication. But Mary's version, titled Mechanism of the Heavens, was recognized by her scientific peers for its value, and William Herschel's son, Sir John Herschel, helped this book to find a home with another publisher, and it was published in eighteen thirty one. The introduction to the book was published a year later. That was really a paper that could stand on its own, but it offered a survey of the knowledge of astronomy that had been achieved up to that point to contextualize the information of the larger work. The book was praised pretty universally by members of the scientific community, and poly math William Wowell was so impressed that, in addition to a letter of praise. He sent Mary a sonnet that he wrote in her honor, which concluded with this stanza that dark to you seems bright, perplexed, seems plain seen in the depths of a pellucid mind, full of clear thought, pure from the ill and vain that cloud the inward light. An honored name be yours, and peace of heart. Grow with your growing fame. Mary Somerville's next book would become something of a lifelong project. The original edition, titled The Connection of the Physical Sciences, was released in eighteen thirty four, but nine more editions were released after that, all of them edited and updated by Mary. This book, like Mechanism of the Heavens, was intended to make scientific concepts accessible and relatable, and it was a significantly ambitious job because she was, as the title indicated, connecting multiple fields and showing how they interacted and affected one another. So physics, astronomy, meteorology, and geography were all included. In recognition of all of this work, Mary was put on the civil List in eighteen thirty five, so The Civilist has its own interesting history, but was established as the list of expenses required to support the monarch and their family, and this came to include things like giving pensions to people doing work that benefited or advanced Britain, and through that Mary Somerville was granted a yearly pension of two hundred pounds thanks to her nomination by Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. Two years later, in eighteen thirty seven, Prime Minister Melbourne increased that number to three hundred pounds annually. In eighteen thirty five, Mary was also made an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society along with Caroline Herschel, making them the first two women who were included in the organization. The society also commissioned a bust of Somerville. She wrote of the honor quote, I was elected an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society at the same time as Miss Caroline Herschel. To be associated with so distinguished an astronomer was in itself an honor. After her election to the Royal Society of London, other similar societies followed suit, including the Royal Academy at Dublin and Society Defusique a distoirs Naturelle of Geneva, another accolade bestowed on her at this time was the naming of a ship built in Liverpool in her honor. A copy of the Royal Society bust was also used for the figurehead of that ship, but the Mary Somerville sadly sailed only once before being lost at sea. When she writes about it, she's so sort of cavalier. It's like, well, I don't know where that ship is. Perhaps the most significant result of connection of the physical sciences was the discovery of the planet Neptune. Mary did not discover the planet herself, but she suggested its existence when she noted that there was this sort of tricky issue with making the math work when it came to the position of Uranus, like something wasn't working out. There was something else involved, potentially, and that was one of the new pieces of writing that she included in the eighteen thirty six edition of the book, which was its third. John Couch Adams was intrigued by this problem and started to work out the math, and then he was credited as one of the astronomers whose work led to the discovery of Neptune. He shared that honor with Urbane Leverier, who also calculated the position of a likely heavenly body and Johann Gottfried Gale, who was the first to see the planet and identify it. That happened in eighteen forty six. In eighteen thirty eight, William's health was suffering and the decision was made to move to Italy in the hopes that it would improve. They settled in Rome, and while they traveled around the country, they never left Italy. As soon as they were settled in, Mary got back to a regular writing schedule, working from early morning until two pm, and then strolling the city to take in whatever architecture or gallery struck their fancy until dinner time. They often had expatriates and colleagues stop by in the evenings for social visits, and this all sounds like a pretty dreamy way to live. They spent time at Bellaggio on Lake Como, which Mary described as quote the most lonely village imaginable, which might sound like a negative, but she also said that she quote liked it exceedingly. They would have returned to England after Lake Como, but William was once again six, so they decided not to travel any farther than back to Florence, and there Mary was given access to the private Library at Pitty Palace, which was both an honor and a delight for her. In eighteen forty four, Mary became an associate of the College of Resurgenti in Rome and an honorary member of the Imperial and Royal Academy of Science, Literature and Art at Arezzo. Throughout all of these travels, while she was working on the many updates to the connection of the physical sciences, Mary also wrote her next book, Physical Geography, which was published in eighteen forty eight. Sir John Herschel was once again a huge support for Mary while she was working on Physical Geography, because she had been concerned that another book published before hers was too similar. That was the German language book Cosmos, written by Alexander von Humboldt and published in eighteen forty five. She recounted quote when Cosmos appeared, I at once determined to put my manuscript in the fire, when Somerville said, do not be rash. Consult some of our friends Herschel, for instance. So I sent the manuscript to Sir John Herschel, who advised me by all means to publish it. When Physical Geography was released, it was recognized as an important work which, like her other work, made matters of science accessible to readers. It was used as a textbook for decades after its publication. The Christmas after that publication, the Summervilles and the Herschels spent the holiday together in England, which also enabled the Somervilles to visit with another friend, Michael Faraday. Mary wrote of him quote, we had formed such a friendship with mister Faraday that while we lived abroad, he sent me a copy of everything he published. And on returning to England, we renewed our friendship with that illustrious philosopher and attended his lectures at the Royal Institution. He had already magnetized a ray of polarized light, but was still lecturing on the magnetic and diamagnetic properties of matter. At the last lecture we attended, he showed the diamagnetism of flame, which had been proved by a foreign philosopher. Mister Faraday never would accept any honor. He lived in a circle of friends to whom he was deeply attached. When the Summervilles tried to return to Italy in eighteen forty nine, the First Italian War of Independence was under way, so they decided to pause in Munich until that conflict had died down. After the winter, they moved to Salzburg and they stayed there many months. When the war ended in August of eighteen forty nine, the family traveled back to Italy, though Mary wrote of their constant state of travel with a sort of nonchalance. She noted of their stop in Piesheria del guarda Italy quote, the devastation of the country was frightful. Pasharia and its fortifications were in ruins. The villages around had been burnt down, and the wretched inhabitants were beginning to repair their roofless houses. Italy's ongoing political conflicts at this time would once again be top of mind for the Summerville's in the coming years, but this time they remained in the country. We'll get into Mary's work for the war effort after we pause for a word from our sponsors. When the Second War of Italian Independence began in eighteen fifty nine, the Summervilles were living in Florence, and they supported the Italians who wanted to unite the states of Italy under one flag and crown. In a letter to her son, Vorensov, dated May twenty ninth, eighteen fifty nine, Mary wrote, quote, everything is perfectly quiet here. The Tuscans are giving money liberally for carrying on the war. We have bought quantities of old linen, and your sisters and I spend the day in making lint and bandages for the wounded soldiers. Great quantities have already been sent to Piedmont. Hitherto the war has been favorable to the Allied army. God grant that England may not enter into the contest till the Austrians are driven out of Italy. After that point has been gained, our honor would be safe. To take part with the oppressors and maintain despotism in Italy would be infamous. She continued to keep Vorensov updated on things in Flora and throughout the conflict. There are many letters from her to him. When it came to what must have been a truly painful life event, Mary wrote only in her memoirs quote, I lost my husband in Florence on the twenty sixth June eighteen sixty. From the preceding narrative, maybe seeing the sympathy, affection and confidence which always existed between us After William's death, Mary said that her health needed a change, and she moved temporarily to Laspezzia, Italy. She wanted to rewrite the Chemistry section of Physical Sciences entirely during this time, but her daughters convinced her not to and to spend that time on some new projects to occupy her mind. Yeah, they were like, you could do that, but it's fine, people love it. Why don't you do something new? I think they I mean, this is my conjecture. I suspect they wanted her to engage in completely new things just to keep her mind off of her sorrow at the time, and what captured her curiosity was the advances that have been made in microscopes and how they had enabled humans to perceive the world in a new way. Eight years later, in eighteen sixty nine, Somerville published on Molecular and Microscopic Science. During the time that she spent writing it, she seemed to return to the style of living that she and William had enjoyed together traveling around Italy. This was not as popular as her earlier works, but that same year the Royal Geographic Society honored her with the Patron's Medal Mary died in Naples, Italy, on November twenty ninth, eighteen seventy two, asleep in her bed. Her library was left in its entirety to the Ladies College at Girton, and she was interred in the English Campisanto in Naples. When she died, Mary was working on another book, which was her autobiography. Mary's daughter Martha edited and annotated the work and it was published as Personal Recollections from Early Life to Old Age, and it came out the year after Mary's death. She had read the same year that her book on microscopic science had come out. Quote. I have lately entered my eighty ninth year, grateful to God for the innumerable blessings he has bestowed on me and my children, at peace with all on earth. And I trust that I may be at peace with my Maker when my last hour comes, which cannot now be far distant. Although I have been tried by many severe afflictions, my life upon the whole has been happy. In my youth, I had to contend with prejudice and illiberality. Yet I was of a quiet temper and easy to live with, and I never interfered with or pride into other people's affairs. I never had an enemy. I have never been of a melancholy disposition. Though depressed sometimes by circumstances, I always rallied again. And although I seldom laugh, I can laugh heartily at wit or on fit occasion. The short time I have to live naturally occupies my thoughts in the blessed hope of meeting again with my beloved children and those who were and are dear to me on earth. I think of death with composure and perfect confidence in the mercy of God. Yet to me, who I am afraid to sleep alone on a stormy night, or even to sleep comfortably any night unless someone is near, It is a fearful thought that my spirit must enter that new state of existence quite alone. But even after this somewhat melancholy passage, she also wrote of how excited she was to incorporate the latest information about China, Japan, South Africa, and Australia into physical geography. There also is we should note some pretty cringey pro colonization rhetoric involved in this. Her work was always a place of solace, and even her final years, she was actively engaged with not just her work but also social causes. And in particular the effort to get animal welfare laws passed in Italy. She notes in her memoir, however, that as she turned ninety two, she was quote extremely deaf and struggling to rem member things like people's names, but noted that while her memory had dulled, it had quote not for mathematical and scientific subjects. I am still able to read books on the higher algebra for four or five hours in the morning, and even to solve the problems. Sometimes I find them difficult, but my old obstinacy remains, for if I do not succeed today, I attack them again on themorrow. I also enjoy reading about all the new discoveries and theories in the scientific world and on all branches of science. Like may my life model on this. In eighteen seventy nine, Somerville College at Oxford was founded as a ladies college, and it was named to honor Mary. This started out just as a hall with limited access to lectures for the enrolled women, but over time it has evolved into a co ed institution. It's often pointed to as a place where a lot of progressive ideas, particularly in terms of rights for women, have been champion and then battled out, and that is still a college today. So there they all know her name, and that is Mary Somerville, who I found quite refreshing after all of our kind of downer stuff we've been discussing. Yeah, I love her. I really really liked her heap. She was so fun to write about and to research on because her writing is really really excellent. There are times when you read older manuscripts from people in like the Victorian era, and it's also stilted that it's really hard to like connect to, but her writing I see why she was a great science communicator because she was completely able to like make it all very casual and make sense and not so academic as to be stuffy. She's very good at it. And I have a really fun listener mail. This listener mail is from our listener Christopher, who starts out Diritt from Dublin, which I probably said very poorly. I wanted to write in with a not quite correction on your Jack a Lantern episode, which I very much enjoyed. You mentioned several times the Irish tradition of carving turnips into lanterns, which is true. However, turnip in Ireland does not mean the same thing as it does elsewhere. Most people know that England and America have different names for some vegetables, like the eggplant versus the aubergine. One of these is what most Americans call a route bega. In England it's called a swede, in Scotland it's called a nap, and in Ireland it is called a turnip, what other people call turnups. The Irish mostly called white turnips. I suspect that Irish historians use the word turnip in writing about vegetable carving traditions, and others assumed they meant turnips as they understood them. So now most sources talk about turnups without specifying whether they mean Anglo American turnips, the brassica rappa or Irish turnips brassica napus aka rutebega or swede. So if you ever looked at the tiny turnups in an American or English shop and why anyone would bother carving one, the answer is that most of them were probably larger and more head shaped rude vegas. Thanks love the podcast, Chris. This is a wonderful context that I did not know at all. A me, it also makes sense, I mean in my head This may not be in any way connected because rude bigas are a little bit sweeter than turnips, So the transition to oh, we could carve this other sweet squash once people had come to America may have been a more natural transition. Yeah. This also reminded me. It's not quite the same thing, but it reminded me a little bit of We were talking about like one of the very old cookbooks on the show at one point, and there was some kind of squash type vegetable, some kind of gourd maybe that had been translated really consistently as pumpkin, but there weren't pumpkins in Europe, right, and it was just one of those things that kind of picked up and proliferated, is like pumpkin, even though that was a different thing. Yeah. Yeah. Also, Christopher sent one of my favorite pictures of all time in the Pet Tax, because it features his tortoiseshell cat Ginger and Ruby, who is a Devon Rex, which is my favorite breed of cats. My beloved mister Burns was the Devon Rex. Ruby has the devon Rex stare that looks very grumpy but is probably very cuddly and sweet. This is your babies are beautiful, Christopher. I want to kiss them both if they would be into it. This makes me so excited now I kind of want to go get rudebiga in carb it. If you would like to write to us, you can do so at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find us on social media as Missed in History Listen. If you carve rudabagas or turn ups, you share those pictures over there. We want them, and you can also subscribe to the podcast if you have already on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,

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