Robert Stewart Whipple (1871–1953) was a businessman in the British scientific instrument trade, a collector of science books and scientific instruments, and an author on their history.  He amassed a unique collection of antique scientific instruments that he later donated to found the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge in 1944.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stewart_Whipple   

The Whipple Museum’s holdings are particularly strong in material dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries, especially objects produced by English instrument makers, although the collection contains objects dating from the medieval period to the present day.  Instruments of astronomy, navigation, surveying, drawing and calculating are well represented, as are sundials, mathematical instruments and early electrical apparatus.  The Museum forms part of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge.  The Department includes a working library with a large collection of early scientific books, some of which were given by Robert Whipple.  https://www.whipplemuseum.cam.ac.uk/about-us   

46 Books that Changed the World by April Snellings   If we’re going to name influential books, we might as well begin with the oldest dated printed tome. On May 11, 868 CE—nearly 600 years before Gutenberg ever considered printing a Bible—a man named Wang Jie commissioned the printing of The Diamond Sutra, a Mahāyāna Buddhist “wisdom” text presented as a conversation between Buddha and his disciple, Subhuti, in Chinese.  According to Susan Whitfield, then-director of the International Dunhuang Project at the British Library, “Printing was developed in China by the 8th century, and certainly by the 9th century, when this sutra was made, it was a refined art.”  The 6000-word, nearly 16.5-foot-long scroll was found in 1900 in a secret library along the Silk Road in China.  https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/books-that-changed-the-world   

sutra (Sanskrit:  lit. 'string, thread') in Indian literary traditions refers to an aphorism or a collection of aphorisms in the form of a manual or, more broadly, a condensed manual or text.  Sutras are a genre of ancient and medieval Indian texts found in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutra   

A mantra (Pali:  manta) or mantram (Devanagari:  मन्त्रम्) is a sacred utterance, a numinous sound, a syllable, word or phonemes, or group of words in Sanskrit, Pali and other languages believed by practitioners to have religious, magical or spiritual powers.  Some mantras have a syntactic structure and literal meaning, while others do not.  The earliest mantras were composed in Vedic Sanskrit in India.  At its simplest, the word ॐ (Aum, Om) serves as a mantra, it is believed to be the first sound which was originated on earth.  Aum sound when produced creates a reverberation in the body which helps the body and mind to be calm.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantra    

To some fanfare but little surprise, the last portrait ever painted by Gustav Klimt has sold for a record auction price in Europe, fetching £85.3m (with fees) at Sotheby's Modern and contemporary art evening sale in London on June 27, 2023.  Klimt's Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan) (1917), executed the year before the artist's death, was the night's star lot and accounted for close to half of the Modern and contemporary evening auction's £199m total (with fees), which narrowly surpassed the upper end of its £155.5m to £197.5m pre-sale estimate (calculated without fees).  Kabir Jhala  https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/06/27/klimt-portrait-sothebys-most-expensive-work-auction-europe   

South Koreans became a year or two younger on June 28, 2023 as new laws that require using only the international method of counting age took effect, replacing the country's traditional method.  Under the age system most commonly used in South Koreans' everyday life, people are deemed to be a year old at birth and a year is added every Jan. 1.  The country has since the early 1960s used the international norm of calculating from zero at birth and adding a year on every birthday for medical and legal documents.  But many South Koreans continued to use the traditional method for everything else.  In December, 2022 South Korea passed laws to scrap the traditional method and fully adopt the international standard.  https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-koreans-become-year-or-two-younger-traditional-way-counting-age-scrapped-2023-06-28/ 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com   Issue 2689  June 28, 2023