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holt (paid)

Dave Wilton

Oct 14, 2024 • 3 min read

Phone box in Holt Forest, Dorset, England

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spitting image

The phrase spitting image, used to describe someone who looks very much like another person, particularly a close family member, is a relatively recent coinage based on a much older idea. That original idea has disappeared from our collective consciousness, making the phrase a dead metaphor, one that is no

Oct 14, 2024 4 min read

thallium

Thallium is a chemical element with atomic number 81 and the symbol Tl. It was discovered independently by chemists William Crookes and Claude-Auguste Lamy in 1861, but Crookes was the first to publish and was the one to name the element. The name is from the Greek θαλλός (thallos, green

Oct 11, 2024 2 min read

thorium (paid)

Thorium is a chemical element with atomic number 90 and the symbol Th. It is named after the Norse god Thor + -ium. It is a soft, malleable, silver-colored metal. All the isotopes of thorium are radioactive, but the most stable one, 232Th, has a half-life of over 14 billion years,

Oct 11, 2024 3 min read

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