The Man Who Read Hieroglyphics
In 1821, the Pioneer Exhibition opened in Piccadilly, in the heart of London. The Egyptomania caused by Napoleon's dramatic march into Egypt two decades earlier had spread from Paris to Britain. For the first time in Europe, a beautifully decorated and painted Egyptian tomb, discovered and opened three years ago…
Two Wives, One Husband
A few days before Christmas in 1925, Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger went on a two-and-a-half-week holiday to a villa on Lake Arosa in Switzerland. He left his wife Anny in Zurich, taking with him his work, his Viennese girlfriend, whose identity remains unknown, and two pearls to stick in his…
Anne Hodges – A Glowing Threat from the Sky
The people of Sylacauga were as agitated as bees. What did they see in the sky? Some claimed that it was lit up with a reddish light, like the one left behind by the Roman candle used in fireworks. Others saw a ball of fire, its trail resembling a giant,…
Henry Ford – The Man Who Invented the Modern Age
Henry Ford was born as the US Civil War raged. The America of neon lights and soaring skyscrapers did not exist then. People were transported by carriage and lived largely off what the land gave them. When Ford died, less than two years had passed since the end of the…
Hans Asperger – Dark Shadows of the Past
In November 2015, the US Center for Disease Control announced that one in 45 children aged 3 to 17 has autism. Eight years ago, one in 150 was thought to have it. But these days, autism experts are not arguing about the lack of uniformity in standards for diagnosing the…
Influenza – Mysterious Disease No. 11
In the winter of 412 BC, many inhabitants of Perinthus, a port city in the Sea of Marmora, began to complain of sore throats, difficulty swallowing, paralysed legs and very poor night vision. The physician Hippocrates recorded all this, and we are left with the first record of the disease,…
Medical Forensics – When the Dead Speak
On November 22nd 1889, a note appeared on the second page of the Paris daily L'Intransigeant, stating that investigators had succeeded in identifying the body. Two illustrations were published alongside it. One showed the decaying, unrecognisable head of a four-month-old corpse, the other the face of the deceased man when…
Sigmund Freud – Cocaine for Breakfast and Dinner
Cocaine is the second most popular illicit drug in the world after cannabis. The white powder that millions of people sniff, smoke and inject is extracted from the leaves of a plant called Erythroxylum coca, which grows in South America. As far back as three thousand years BC, the local…
The History of Racing – From Muddy Fields to Racetracks
Sir Henry Segrave, 1920s speed racer and world speed record holder, wrote in his later years: "The desire for speed is an instinct possessed by every human being, as well as by the great majority of animals, and has been one of the most important drives in the process of…
