Marie Curie, a French physicist, was the first woman to achieve great fame in science. She was born in Poland in 1867 and married the French scientist, Pierre Curie, in 1895. Her main interest was radioactively in uranium ore, Marie Curie identified radium in 1898. Four years later, she managed to prepare the element itself, having extracted less than a …

In 1822, Hugh Clapperton, a young naval lieutenant, agreed to go with Walter Oudney and Dixon Denham to try and discover the source of the River Niger in North Africa. They journeyed south cross the Sahara from Tripoli to Lake Chad, the first white men to visit the region. Oudney died at Murner, and the other two separated, Clapperton going …

Herodotus, the Greek historian of the fifth century B.C., tells in his History of an expedition made by Phoenicians at the orders of the Egyptian pharaoh, Necho. He mentions its importance but fails to give the names of any of those who took part. About a century later another expedition set sail under a Phoenician called Hanno, and one of …

In 1570, Francis Drake, a Devon seaman, sailed to South America and sacked the Spanish town of Nombre de Dios. Later he climbed a tree on the Isthmus of Panama and saw, away in the distance, the shimmer of the Pacific Ocean. He swore that one day he would return and sail an English ship on that great ocean. It …

Sir Isaac Newton is often considered to be the world’s finest scientist. Born in Lincon in 1642, he studied at Cambridge and went on to discover the law of gravitation, and invent the first reflecting telescope. He was knighted n 1702 and died in 1727. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. He wrote his masterpiece, Principia, in 1687.

In 1800, Matthew Flinders was a young naval lieutenant with a passion for exploring. He sailed around the Australian coast with a friend called George Bass in a small boat they named ‘Tom Thumb’. Once, on going ashore, they were menaced by hostile natives but Flinders won them over by trimming their hair and beards! Later, in 1801, finders sailed …

Coeur de Lion, the Lion Heart, was the nickname of King Richard I of England (1157-99). From his youth he was engaged in almost constant war against his father, his brothers, or the king of France. Richard became king on his father’s death in 1189. He went off on the Third Crusade, and, captured on his way home, was imprisoned …

In 1827 a railroad was built from Baltimore to Ohio to counteract the prosperity that canals were bringing to Philadelphia and New York. It was originally intended to use horse power. But in 1830 a cheap, though not very reliable, method of propelling trains was tried out. The Baltimore and Ohio’s sailing car ‘Aeolus’ made its maiden voyage in the …

Whilst shopping in Athens, Arthur Evans saw some small stones on which was an unusual style of writing. Learning that these stones came from Crete he went to the island and, in 1893, began digging. In time he unearthed a great city that had been ruled by the legendary King Minos. Evans had, in fact, discovered the remains of a …

Radio and radar waves, microwaves, infrared rays, light rays, ultraviolet rays, X-rays and gamma rays all form what is called the electromagnetic spectrum. They are all various kinds of radiant energy and they differ only in their wavelength of frequency. Those with long wavelengths are generally called waves and the shorter ones rays. Before 1800, only light was known, as …