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The Great London Smog of 1952
Also sometimes called The Big Smoke, was a severe air-pollution event that affected London in December of 1952. A period of cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions to collect airborne pollutants. Coal use was the main culprit, and it all came together to form a thick layer of smog over the city. It lasted from Friday, 5 December to Tuesday, 9 December 1952 and then dispersed quickly once the weather changed. It caused major disruption by reducing visibility and even penetrating indoor areas. It was far more severe than previous smog events experienced in the past called “pea-soupers”. However, the effects were more long lasting than the…
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Cemeteries
We previously looked at the earliest known death rituals of the first settled communities at the end of the last glacial period in areas such as the Levant, Catalhoyuk and so on. We are also fully aware of the astonishing impact of the Egyptian Pyramids and surrounding tombs. Britain’s earliest known cemeteries were arguably Bronze Age and Iron Age Barrows, stone built cairns, and cists, fragmentary burials in famous sites such as Stone Henge, and sacrificial “bog-bodies”. In the 18th Century, allegedly there was found the oldest British example of a dedicated cemetery in a narrow gorge in Somerset, locally known as Aveline’s Hole, where up to 100 neatly aligned…
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Renaissance Zombies
Most people are aware of the resurgence of zombies in popular culture. What most people don’t realize that there was a time in history when the streets of Italy resembled The Walking Dead. The syphilis outbreak in the High Renaissance was very close to a zombie outbreak in the most cosmopolitan parts of Europe. The Italian Renaissance was a time of great learning, art and culture. There was flamboyant dress, parties and promiscuity. However, it was also a time of great disease. Syphilis was sweeping the population, and every country was pointing the finger at each other for the source. The English and Italians called it “the French disease”, the…
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Henry Moseley – Periodic Table
Henry Gwyn Jeffries Moseley was born in Dorset in November 1887. His parents were Anabel Gwyn Jeffreys, daughter of biologist John Gwyn Jeffreys, and Henry Nottidge Moseley, biologist, anatomist and physiologist who was part of the Challenger expedition of the 1870s, which circumnavigated the world and discovered thousands of previously unknown marine species. After spending his early years at Summer Field School, Henry (known as Harry to his friends) was offered a scholarship to Eton, where he went on to win Chemistry and Physics prizes in 1906 before successfully gaining entry to Oxford later that year. Sadly, as a result of a severe bout of hayfever, he did not perform…
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THE FIRST USE OF BIOLOGICAL WARFARE AND THE SIEGE OF KAFFA
It is recorded that by 1331 The Black Death was ravaging its way through central Asia. It was for a long time a mystery as to how exactly this plague managed to make its way to the shores of Europe but by reading ancient texts historians and biologists think they have traced its advancement to the city of Kaffa in Crimea and the first ever recorded use of biological warfare. As the plague killed half the population of China and made its way through India and Persia somehow trade managed to continue. It’s of no surprise then that plague infested rats climbed aboard trading vessels and found their way into…
