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
ON THIS DAY: 27 July 1866 – History was made when the first working transatlantic telegraph cable came ashore at Heart’s Content, Newfoundland. While this original telegraph cable has long since become obsolete, its legacy lives on in the modern transatlantic cables that now carry telephone and internet data between continents. The journey to success … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 10 July 1962 – Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin was granted U.S. Patent No. 3,043,625 for the three-point seat belt, a life-saving invention that would go on to revolutionise automotive safety. It’s estimated that Bohlin’s design has reduced the risk of death in car crashes by 45%—a remarkable impact for such a simple … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 2 July 1839 – a courageous act of resistance took place aboard the Spanish slave ship La Amistad (whose name means, ironically, ‘friendship’). Fifty-three Africans who had been abducted from their homeland and sold into slavery in Cuba rose up against their captors in a bold bid for freedom. The captives had … Read more