In Zwierzyniec (Lublin province), a stone commemorates the victory over locusts, which, according to the carved inscription, appeared in Roztocze on 26 August 1711. This date was inscribed during the renovation of the monument in the 21st century, when the previous date – 27 August 1859 – was removed. However, both versions of the date are incorrect. The article presents the history of the monument based on previously unknown sources, identifies the person who founded it, and describes the insect invasion and measures taken to destroy the locusts that, in reality, affected this area in 1860.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, environmental protection has played an increasingly important role both in the chemical industry and in the scientific work of chemists in the academic world. A noteworthy feature of the so-called green chemistry and sustainable chemistry is the emphasis that practitioners of both disciplines lay on codifying the principles, rules, and characteristics that environmentally friendly chemical reactions and processes should meet. These codifications have a complicated epistemological status: they aim to set the criteria of ‘greenness’, indicate the direction of scientific development, and build the foundations for new research programs. While the most famous of these codifications are the twelve principles of green chemistry developed in the United States in 1998, successive attempts to codify a new type of environmentally friendly chemistry have been regularly made over the last twenty years – not only in the United States but also in Germany. Starting with American green chemistry, through German ‘soft chemistry’ (sanfte Chemie) and chemistry for sustainable development, and ending with circular chemistry, this article is an attempt to familiarize the Polish reader with this new tool in the work of researchers and engineers. Its purpose is to pay particular attention to the context of the creation and interpretation of consecutive sets of rules of a new type of chemistry and the challenges related to their application.

Julian Pulikowski was an associate professor of Musicology who lectured at the University of Warsaw from 1935–1939. The article proves that although there was no formal possibility to defend a Master’s thesis in this field, Pulikowski became an informal supervisor of Gustawa Zysman’s (Krystyna Żukotyńska’s) work. The idea for the topic was conceived in 1934. Stefan Czarnowski, professor at the Department of Cultural History at the University of Warsaw, became the official thesis supervisor. The work titled Opera repertoire of the National Theater as a contribution to the cultural life of Warsaw in the second half of the 18th century was defended in June 1938. It has hitherto remained unknown to researchers – extant only in a typescript stored in the University of Warsaw Archive – as has been the case with Pulikowski’s letter in which he admits his supervision, held in the Jagiellonian Library in Krakow. Although Zysman obtained a Master’s degree in History, the content of the work indicates that it was, in fact, the first work in Musicology defended at the University of Warsaw.

Roman Franciszek Henryk Nitsch was born on September 5, 1873 in Podchybie. In 1899, he graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of the Jagiellonian University. Until 1915, he worked as an assistant in the Department of Hygiene of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, cooperating with Prof. Odon Bujwid. In 1915 he was nominated as an associate professor of hygiene and bacteriology. In 1920, he was appointed full professor of bacteriology at the University of Warsaw. For the rest of his life, he was associated with the research center in Warsaw. He died on 29 March 1943. Roman Nitsch’s scientific activity, which mainly involved his research on vaccination against rabies, is a significant contribution to the development of Polish medical microbiology. The analysis of Roman Nitsch’s scientific achievements proves that he was a continuator of Ludwik Pasteur’s and Odon Bujwid’s – his predecessor and teacher – research thought, as well as the author of pioneering works that shed new light on the world of microbes, which was then only gradually being discovered.

The author of the article investigates the role and importance of Hannibal’s military equipment. Through the analysis of available literary sources, the author indicates imperfections of descriptions concerning this aspect of the Carthaginian’s activity. In addition, he draws attention to the characteristic form of siege weapons – as described in the sources, which allows for assuming some development tendencies in both modes of operating and kinds of Hannibal’s army combat equipment.

Kevin J. Brown, Dawne mapy. Podróż w przeszłość, tłum. Michał Zagrodzki, Wydawnictwo Arkady, Warszawa 2019, ss. 207, 73 reprodukcje dawnych map

The article highlights the most serious factual mistakes and errors in the descriptions of the reproduced maps in the Polish edition of Kevin J. Brown’s A Journey Back in Time Through Maps (Dawne mapy. Podróż w przeszłość, transl. M. Zagrodzki, Warszawa 2019). The author explains in detail the history of creation and facts related to the 16th–18th-century maps such as: Jean Janvier’s Mappe-monde, ou description du globe terrestre (1762), Didier Robert de Vaugondy’s Mappemonde ou description du Globe terrestre (1783), Philippe Buache’s Mappemonde à l’usage de l’instruction (1808), Jodocus Hondius’s Designatio orbis Christiani (1621), Athanasius Kircher’s Tabula geographico-hydrographica (1665), or Johann Baptista Homann’s Accurata Utopiae tabula (after 1724). The evolution of representing the California Peninsula on manuscript and printed maps up to the mid-18th century is briefly discussed.