The practice of quarantine, first began during the 14th century in an effort to protect coastal cities from the plague. Ships arriving from infected ports, really any port, were required to sit at anchor for forty days before being allowed to land. The word quarantine, was derived from the Italian words quaranta giorni which mean forty days. That’s a lot longer time to wait than the two-weeks we are now asked to endure in quarantine due to the corona virus.
Just before we entered into quarantine and the rest of the world also locked itself down, we visited the Saint Louis Science Center. The featured exhibit there was on Leonardo Da Vinci. This traveling exhibit had visited Saint Louis before and we happened upon it then, quite by accident, when we had been bicycling around the downtown one day. Then it was on display in the lobby of a bank building. There was only one guy running it and we were its only visitors at the time. I think that this show is better suited to that venue and is not worthy of the science center. It is a history exhibit without any artifacts. Every single one of the items on display are replicas. Actually, they are even less than that. Most of these items that were supposedly invented by Da Vinci, were really only just sketched by him. From these drawings the purveyors of this show have gone on to fashion their interpretation of what they would look like in real life. I was so unimpressed by this exhibit that I have not bothered to write about it until now, but since we are still under quarantine and not much else is happening, news of it has finally bubbled to the surface. I guess that it is just a slow news day.