“Torius”, the earliest known named resident of the area that is now Basel

For my sixtieth birthday in August, my wife and my in-laws gave me a subscription to the new ten-volume history of Basel, "Stadt.Geschichte.Basel". Since then, I've been reading the first volume, one or two pages at a time, and in the last few days, I've arrived at the section about the Basel area during the Roman Empire. This morning, I came across an illustration of a "Gepäckanhänger aus Geweih" ("Luggage label made of horn"), which has an inscription: "T.Tori". As the book notes, this refers to the name of the luggage's owner, "Torius", which makes this otherwise unknown soldier the earliest resident of what is now Basel whose name is known. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 November 2024)

“Crackle”: The fifth derivative of position

I wanted to look up "crackle" because I wondered from a poem by Ada Limón if it might be the name of a bird (as the context of the poem suggested). It's not, but it is a name for "the fifth derivative of position". In order, the derivatives of position from the first to the sixth are velocity, acceleration, jerk (or jolt), jounce (or snap), crackle, and pop. Yes, the fourth to sixth derivatives are named after the characters in advertisements for Kellogg's Rice Krispies: snap, crackle, and pop. The latter don't come up often, but according to Wikipedia, reduction of snap, the derivative of jerk, to zero improves railway tracks. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 November 2024)