December 14 – Fake? Artificial? Cultured?

Posted on December 14, 2018

Ahh...pearls. They're lustrous...iridescent...pearlescent!

Lustrous basically means shiny. Iridescent and pearlescent refer to the subtle rainbow-like colors seen on a seashell or pearl - colors that seem to change when seen from different angles.

Humans have figured out how to capture this sort of iridescence in paint. This sports car is considered to have a pearlescent paint job - you see different colors as you move around it!

Iridescence occurs in both seashells and pearls, since we're talking about mollusks and mollusks, nacre and nacre:

Many mollusks secrete from their bodies a substance that protects them from grit, sand, parasites, or other bad stuff. This protective coating, made up of several minerals, is called nacre, and it makes a solid layer on the inside of the shell.

Some mollusks have more rainbow-like iridescence in their layers of nacre than do others. Abalone are particularly famous for colorful, beautiful nacre.

Another name for nacre is "mother-of-pearl." See - we're circling back to pearls! Pearls are nacre that has coated a small bit of grit or sand - and then layer upon later of nacre builds up, eventually creating a round, tear-shaped, or irregular pearl. Mussels and clams can produce pearls but rarely do; almost all natural pearls are created by oysters.

 

The Imperial Crown of England
has 273 pearls - plus of
course other gems.

Now we circle back to the title of this post: fake, artificial, or cultured. Since pearls are so beautiful and...well, pearly, people love to wear them as gems. But they're not incredibly easy to find, and if you want pearls of the same size and color for your jewelry, it's even harder to find matching pearls. Of course, this is why pearls are valuable.

But looonng ago, someone decided to make artificial pearls. I'm pretty sure that most of these were not "fake pearls" - that would mean making artificial pearls but then lying to people and saying that they were real, natural, oyster-made pearls. Some folks tried to lie and cheat, I'm sure - but for the most part, people making artificial pearls sold them (for lots less) as artificial or false pearls.

So - how do you make an artificial pearl?

From the 1200s on, there were attempts to make artificial pearls by creating a round core out of rock or clay or shell and then painting the outside of the spherical bead with pearlescent paint or coating. Another type of artificial pearls were glass beads with their insides coated with the pearlescent paint; the glass beads were later filled with wax so that the beads would have the weight of pearls. 

These false pearls had names like Venetian pearls, Roman pearls, Parisian pearls, and Majorica pearls. 

Venetian pearls

On this date in 1656, M. Jacquin of Paris made his first artificial pearls by painting beads carved from gypsum with a liquid made from ground-up fish scales. 

Fish scales are - you guessed it - iridescent.

Later Jacquin made the blown-glass sort of artificial pearls by coating the insides of glass spheres with his fish-scale liquid. Note that he called them Perles Fausses (false pearls).

Others in the world were making their iridescent coatings out of such things as snail slime, egg white, ground-up nacre, silver plus powdered glass...

Nowadays most people own cultured pearl jewelry. Oyster farmers have figured out how to consistently and constantly grow oysters so that they produce pearls. So...these are real pearls, created by oysters...but they are not natural pearls, because the pearl creation doesn't happen naturally, by chance.

Above, cultured pearls. Two below,
glass-bead "pearls."

For more on artificial pearls, check out this earlier post.

Also on this date:

Alabama Day 

Astronomer Tycho Brahe's birthday

Arrival of the Yule Lads in Iceland

Day of the Horse

Monkey Day

Anniversary of President LBJ saying, “Some geniuses at Stanford University have created life in the test tube!" –when that wasn't what actually happened!

Anniversary of the first humans to reach South Pole

Yoga Day

Birthday of ship expert and artist Alexander Nelke

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest pages on:

• December holidays 
• December birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in December

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

• January holidays 
• January birthdays 
• Historical anniversaries in January
  
  
  

May 1 – Martin Z. Mollusk Day

Posted on May 1, 2014

This is the real Martin Z. Mollusk.

Today in Ocean City, New Jersey, people are gathering to see if a hermit crab named Martin Z. Mollusk can see his shadow.

The time? 11:00 in the morning.

The place? The beach adjacent to the Ocean City Music Pier.

The local high school's band will play “Pomp and Circumstance” to give the feeling of gravitas for the event.

This is some guy dressed up as Martin Z.
Mollusk.

Then a procession of pretend “celebrities” will parade into the area surrounding the “Circle of Truth,” and there will be a song or two and a few pretty speeches.

Then—the moment of truth—the hermit crab will emerge from hiding and either see, or not see, his shadow! If he sees his shadow, hooray! – summer comes to Ocean City a week early! If he doesn't – no worries, summer will still come...just right on time.

Okay, yes, this is a complete rip-off of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania's, Groundhog Day. But it brings people into town on Thursday before the big Spring Block Party on the weekend. For several days there will be 350 vendors in the streets, live entertainment, pony rides, fun for the tens of thousands of people who come to town!

By the way, I read that, so far, Martin Z. Mollusk has ALWAYS seen his shadow!

Just a minute, here!

If Martin is a hermit crab, why is he “Martin Z. (the) Mollusk”? Don't you know, hermit crabs are crustaceans, like other crabs and shrimp and lobster?

What's the difference between mollusks and crustaceans?

^ CRUSTACEANS ^

Here's one way they are alike:

Neither mollusks nor crustaceans have an internal skeleton (bones).

Both of them have external skeletons – called exoskeletons. (Well, MOST mollusks and all crustaceans have exoskeletons. An octopus and a slug are examples of mollusks without skeletons of any sort.) We generally call these exoskeletons shells.

But they are really different in other ways:

This is a mollusk.

Crustaceans are more closely related to insects and spiders than mollusks are. Like insects and spiders, crustaceans have segmented bodies and paired, jointed legs. They also have two pairs of antennae.

Mollusks, on the other hand, have soft, unsegmented bodies and no legs or antennae. (Don't confuse the two soft sensory tentacles on top of a snail's head with antennae—they're very different.)

Now...what about the hermit crab?

Note the hermit crab's
soft, unprotected abdomen,
which is curled up behind
its head and legs.

A hermit crab lives in a hard shell and has hard, jointed legs and antennae. Its soft abdomen is unprotected when it is not “wearing” its shell.

In other words, as its name suggests, a hermit crab is a crustacean.

I think a lot of people get confused about hermit crabs because they almost always choose to “wear” (live in and carry around) the discarded shells of mollusks. (Once in a blue moon you'll see a hermit crab living inside a chunk of wood or something like that.) 

So, if you ever see a beautiful shell from a sea snail (a mollusk) walking around on jointed legs – you can be sure that the creature inside is a hermit crab, not the mollusk that created the shell.

Normally, you will see a hermit crab inside
a mollusk's abandoned shell.

I am wondering if every single person in Ocean City, New Jersey, thinks that hermit crabs are mollusks? Surely not. I think maybe Martin stole the last name “Mollusk” when he stole the mollusk shell he lives in!

One of the best things ever!

Did you know that there are times when a large mollusk shell becomes available, and what is called a “vacancy chain” of hermit crabs forms. This is a line of crabs from largest to smallest. As the first hermit crab in line leaves its shell to take possession of the large new shell, the next hermit crab in line gives up its shell to move into the shell the first hermit crab just abandoned. Then the next one in line drops its shell and moves into the larger shell of the second, and so on all the way down the line.

Isn't that cool? I wonder how long this process takes?

Also on this date:

BatmanDay 

Build It! Day 

May Day

Lei Day

 National Day of Reason 

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

• May holidays 
• May birthdays 
• Historical anniversaries in May

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

• June holidays
• June birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in June

July 24, 2010

Children's Day – Vanuatu

Vanuatu is an island nation in the South Pacific, lying between Australia and Fiji. It isn't just one island, but rather an archipelago of 83 islands and islets.

Today the people of Vanuatu celebrate Children's Day, which has two primary themes: “Stop violence against children” and “Give a child the chance to express an opinion today.” In the morning marches are held, followed by speeches, a dance, and other activities at schools.

Kids get the afternoon off from school and are expected to have fun with their families. Some children receive presents from their parents, but the organization Save the Children yearly reminds the people of Vanuatu that it doesn't matter if parents can't afford to buy their kids presents―that the day is aimed at encouraging parents and kids to spend time together.

How'd they get there?

People have settled the various islands of Vanuatu for at least 4,000 years, undoubtedly arriving by boat. However, there are a limited number of plant and animal species on the islands. This is most likely explained by the fact that the islands are quite new, geologically speaking. There are no large mammals native to the island, although people have brought the usual critters with them (such as hogs, dogs, and cattle). The most common indigenous mammals seem to be bats and rats. There's not much mystery about how they got to the islands: the bats flew, like the many bird and insect species, and the rats were probably stowaways on people's dugouts and boats.

There are some saltwater crocodiles on the island. It is tempting to think that they swam over from nearby islands, wher

e crocs are common, but these particular crocodiles are all descended from crocodiles brought over by colonists. I was amazed to see how few crocs there were: only three, possibly four! Apparently they are not breeding (all males? all females? too old?), so the crocodiles of Vanuatu will soon die out.

The Vanuatuan animals that are very common are fish and more than 4,000 species of mollusks. Some of these creatures, including cone shells (one variety is pictured here, left) and stonefish, are fatally poisonous.

Mollusks are land or water creatures that create protective “homes” of one or two shells, plus squids and octopi. Some examples are snails, clams, conchs, and oysters. Learn more about mollusks at the Conchologists of America website.

Did you know?

• One tourist attraction is a sunken luxury liner similar to the Titanic. Instead of being sunk super deep down in cold water, however, this luxury liner rests on a shallow sea floor in clear, diveable water.

• Vanuatu boasts a banyan tree as large as a soccer field!

• A hotel in the capital city of Port Villa (on the island of Efate), floats guests' beds out over a lagoon. Sounds nice!