Last year, a couple of months before I launched History in the Margins,  My Own True Love and I met up with one of my best history buddies to visit an exhibit at the New York Hall of Science:  1001 Inventions: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Civilization.

Although the exhibit was obviously designed with children in mind, we found it utterly engaging, from the introductory film starring Ben Kingsley as 12th century engineering genius, al-Jazari, to the working scale models of medieval Islamic technology.  The exhibit’s creators did an excellent job of bringing the medieval Islamic world, in all its diversity,  to life for a western audience. This is a topic I’ve spent a lot of time on, and I still learned plenty of new things.

I hear some of you grumbling, “That was more than a year ago, why is she telling us about this now?”

Because, dear readers,  1001 Inventions is due to open for a six month run in Washington DC on August 12 at the National  Geographic Museum.  If you live anywhere nearby, or have a DC trip on the schedule,  it’s well worth the visit.