The Consequence of Matters

  Isaac Newton, beyond doubt the greatest scientist in history, was born on this day, more or less, in 1642. Though Newton was a key figure in the scientific revolution, he was arguably more the last of the mystics than the first of the scientists. I say more or less because Newton lived during the time that England made the shift from the Julian to the Gregorian calendars. Newton was born "an hour or two after midnight" on December 25 Julian, which was in force at the time. When the calendar changed, that day became January 4 Gregorian. So you pay your money and you take your pick. Newton was born prematurely, and his mother, Hannah Ayscough, said he could have fit inside a quart mug. His father had died three months before. When Newton was three, his mother remarried and left her son to be raised by his maternal grandmother. In June 1661, he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, on the recommendation of his uncle Rev William Ayscough, who had studied there. He started...

  I've actually never had an eggnog. My impression is that it is likely just ice cream that was never frozen, perhaps with some nasty cloves thrown in. Do not like cloves. The drink is the descendant of a medieval concoction known as a posset. Possets were a sort of hot milk punch, with wine or ale added when hot to make the milk curdle. Possets make an appearance in Macbeth, Act II scene ii when Lady Macbeth uses a poisoned one to knock out the guards outside Duncan's quarters. The doors are open, and the surfeited grooms Do mock their charge with snores. I have drugg'd their possets That death and nature do contend about them, Whether they live or die. and also in one of the Narnia books, The Silver Chair. C. S. Lewis writes that Jill Pole should be given "...all you can think of—possets and comfits and caraways and lullabies and toys." How possets became nogs is still debated. The word "nog" referred to a kind of strong...