Modern life relies heavily on oil. We use it to power our vehicles, and use the gas that collects above it to heat our homes. We make plastics from it. Yet the first oil well was drilled in only 1859. Before that, people collected oil at ‘seeps’ where it appears above ground — and they…
Category: history
Pelicans and disabled cranes
The English diarist John Evelyn records a visit he made to James’ Park in London on 9th February 1665 where he saw many birds. One was a pelican, a gift from the Russian ambassador to London: “I examin’d the Throate of the Onocratylus or Pelecan, the tongue scarce appearing, the [B]eake above 2 foote long,…
Eighty percent of the nitrogen in you came from a chemical factory
Have you ever wondered how the world could suddenly support so many people? In 1900 there were 1.6 billion people and now there are 7 billion. How can we make enough food for them? The answer is a ground-breaking chemical process called the Haber process. It doesn’t sound that interesting – it takes nitrogen from…
Messing up the world for 2,500 years
We hear a lot about pollution and particularly what we are doing to the atmosphere. It seems we have been doing it for a very long time. Ice core samples from Greenland show raised levels of lead in the atmosphere beginning around 500BC. This is the earliest evidence of anthropogenic (human-caused) pollution. It was produced…
A metal nose, a pet moose and the stars
We take it for granted that the universe changes. It began with the Big Bang, is still expanding; stars generate, die and are recycled. But until the sixteenth everyone believed – as the great Greek philosopher Aristotle had taught – that the heavens are eternal and unchanging. Then in 1572, a new star appeared. That…
The original shipwrecked rhino
January 1516 – the rhino famous from Durer’s illustration drowns in the Mediterranean
The shipwrecked rhino 