ON THIS DAY: 18 December 1912 – Amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson presented members of the Geological Society in London with a reconstructed skull, fragments of which had been discovered, he claimed, in a gravel pit south of Ashdown Forest in East Sussex. Dawson was backed by respected palaeontologist Arthur Smith Woodward from the British Museum, … Read more
Ada Lovelace, a mathematician and pioneering computer programmer, was born as the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) and Anne Isabella Milbanke. Her parents’ marriage was unhappy, and Byron separated from his wife just a month after Ada’s birth. As a child, Ada was often sickly, but her mother strongly … Read more
Five days of deadly smog began in London, leaving thousands of people dead. The Great Smog of London was caused by a combination of industrial pollution and high-pressure weather conditions. The weather was unusually cold and windless, preventing the dispersion of particles. London was brought to a near standstill. Visibility was so poor that people … Read more
At 5:20 am local time an earthquake lasting 30 seconds, with a magnitude of 7.5 on the Richter scale, devastated parts of Sicily and southern Italy. The epicentre was in the Strait of Messina, between Sicily and Calabria on the ‘toe’ of Italy’s mainland. Due to seismic activity in the area, Sicily and Calabria are … Read more