and uncommon words Proteomics: the study of a large number of proteins in biological systems. From an amazing essay in the “Smithsonian” ‘Invisible Evidence.’ ”Touch something and you leave a trace of yourself that can last for centuries.”
”One rainy morning in May, a Romanian archivist named Tudor Arhire retrieved a brown envelope from a wooden filing cabinet, slid out a small, yellowed page and placed it carefully on the table. Arhire is the custodian of a government archive in Sibiu, Romania, a medieval city in the region of Transylvania. The document he produced was a letter, more than 500 years old. Despite the ancient creases and stains, its nine lines of flowing Latin script, translated long ago, were clearly legible. But nobody here was intending to read it. Instead, two visitors, a married couple named Gleb and Svetlana Zilberstein, waited eagerly with latex gloves and plastic tubes.
The letter is one of the archive’s most precious possessions. Dated August 4, 1475, it was written to the burghers of Sibiu by a man describing himself as “prince of the Transalpine regions.” He informed the townspeople that he would soon be taking up residence among them. He signed with a name sure to strike fear into their hearts: Vlad Dracula.”
”Dracula had previously ruled the neighboring region of Wallachia, and he was known for his cruelty, especially his practice of impaling enemies on stakes. Thus his nickname, Vlad the Impaler. Now he was preparing to gain the Wallachian throne once again. His letter to Sibiu’s residents is one of only a few sparse documents related to the notorious prince, who centuries later would inspire Bram Stoker’s fictional vampire, Count Dracula.”
[smithsonianmag.com]