Appian Way – Piranesi (1756)
A truly enormous version that shows its many, many details can be found at Wikipedia.

Gregorio Allegri – “Miserere mei, Deus”

No day like today to reflect on the enormities of mankind, the number and scope of which have, incredibly, survived centuries of prayer. The piece itself (I have learned) was forbidden to be performed outside the Vatican or transcribed, on pain of excommunication. It was only after a 14-year-old Mozart memorized it during attendance and copied it out from memory that it escaped the confines of the Sistine Chapel; the Pope himself praised Mozart and the music was released for general performance.

Jack Rose – “Dusty Grass”
The Black Dirt Sessions

A bit like a minor-key “Rappahanock River Rag” at the beginning, but morphing into something more complex and urgent once it departs from its initial jangly theme. This EP is host to a number of excellent tracks, including an extended “Cross the North Fork” and a melancholy pair of tracks closing out the B side. Certainly worth a listen for fans of Jack Rose (RIP) and acoustic guitar in general. (insound)

Fact check: Dracula

Midway through Dracula, Stoker makes the following references in regards to extraordinary vigor and longevity:

There are always mysteries in life. Why was it that Methuselah lived nine hundred years, and ‘Old Parr’ one hundred and sixty-nine, and yet that poor Lucy, with four men’s blood in her poor veins, could not live even one day? For, had she lived one more day, we could save her. Do you know all the mystery of life and death? Do you know the altogether of comparative anatomy and can say wherefore the qualities of brutes are in some men, and not in others? Can you tell me why, when other spiders die small and soon, that one great spider lived for centuries in the tower of the old Spanish church and grew and grew, till, on descending, he could drink the oil of all the church lamps?“

The biblical story doesn’t really warrant investigation, and Thomas Parr is established cryptoanthropology, but I was curious about the spider anecdote. A little research turned up the following in the "Literary and Scientific Intelligence” section of an 1821 number of the Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany:

Spiders.—The sexton of the church of St Eustace, at Paris, amazed to find frequently a particular lamp extinct early, and yet the oil consumed only, sat up several nights to perceive the cause. At length he discovered that a spider of surprising size came down the cord to drink the oil. A still more extraordinary instance of the same kind occurred during the year 1751, in the Cathedral of Milan. A vast spider was observed there, which fed on the oil of the lamps. M. Morland, of the Academy of Sciences, has described this spider, and furnished a drawing of it. It weighed four pounds, and was sent to the Emperor of Austria, and is now in the Imperial Museum at Vienna.“

It appears Dr. Van Helsing was exaggerating the length of the spider’s life somewhat, but the anecdote is at least based on what appear to be real events.

The drawing appears to be lost, unfortunately, though here is an image (Prout, 1839) of the cathedral in question, which appears capable of housing such an animal:

Mathematicians, like cows in the dark, all look alike to me.

Abraham Flexner

The library at Malmaison, Charles Percier and Pierre François Léonard Fontaine (1812)

Auroral Acoustics

Researchers investigating auroral phenomena were surprised to hear a “clapping” sound on their recording, which they estimate to have originated during the auroral storm at about 70 meters above the ground. There are stories of the sounds made by the aurora, but it has never before been recorded, if this is indeed real.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)