ON THIS DAY: 3 November, 1885 – U.S. Patent No. 329,495 was granted for the Safety Burial Casket, invented by Charles Sieber and Frederick H. Borntraeger of Waterloo, Monroe County, Illinois. In the nineteenth century, a widespread fear gripped the public imagination – that of being buried alive. This anxiety, known as tapephobia, was fueled … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 30 October 1918 – William Walker, the diver who saved Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire, England, died of the Spanish flu. Born in South London, Walker trained as a diver with Siebe Gorman, pioneers of modern diving equipment. Skilled and fearless, he was accustomed to working in some of the most difficult underwater … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 23 October 1533 – the fourteen-year-old Catherine de’ Medici entered the port city of Marseilles astride a magnificent roan horse. It was one of those dazzling ceremonial moments where dynastic ambition, politics, and pageantry met in perfect Renaissance harmony. Catherine, niece of Pope Clement VII, had come to France to wed Henry, … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 17 October 1814 – Eight people perished in what has become known as the London Beer Flood. At Meux & Co.’s Horse Shoe Brewery on Tottenham Court Road, a colossal wooden vat containing over 135,000 gallons (610,000 litres) of porter burst. On that fateful afternoon, the culprit was a massive fermentation vat, … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 22 September 1909 – RMS Mauretania Wins the Blue Riband Westbound. The Blue Riband was the unofficial prize for the fastest average speed during a transatlantic crossing, measured in knots. It was not a physical award in that era, but rather a coveted mark of prestige for shipping companies. Eastbound voyages (Europe … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 11 September 1978 – Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident writer and journalist, was assassinated in London in one of the Cold War’s most notorious acts of covert murder. After defecting from communist Bulgaria in 1969, Markov became a powerful voice against the regime of leader Todor Zhivkov. He worked with the BBC … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 1 September 1914 – The world lost its last passenger pigeon when Martha died at the Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio. Named after First Lady Martha Washington, she lived to be about 29 years old and became a symbol of one of the most dramatic extinctions in modern history. Passenger pigeons (Ectopistes migratorius) … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 29 August 1892 – At the Windsor Hotel in Ottawa, the Canadian inventor Thomas Ahearn made culinary history by serving the first full dinner ever cooked entirely using electricity. It was an astonishing 30-course meal for 100 distinguished guests. Just weeks earlier, Ahearn had been granted Patent No. 39,916 for an improved … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 13 August 1961 – In the early hours of August 13, 1961, something dramatic and deeply symbolic began to unfold in the heart of Europe. Under the cover of darkness, East German authorities swiftly closed the border between East and West Berlin. Barbed wire fences were rolled out with military precision, and … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 1 August 1720 – The infamous ‘South Sea Bubble’ began to collapse. By December, shares in the South Sea Company had plummeted from a dazzling £1,000 to a dismal £124. Often called the first financial crash and sometimes dubbed the world’s first Ponzi scheme, it devastated investors across Britain. Even Isaac Newton … Read more