The Forgotten of Saint Paul Island

In 1929, La Langouste Française hired 30 people to go lobster…

Bouvet Island — ‘The Last Place on Earth’

It seems fitting that the most isolated spot on the planet should be an inhospitable, glacier-covered rock sitting smack in the path of the ‘furious fifties’ storm winds. More than 1700 and 2500 kms respectively from nearest neighbours Antarctica and Cape…

The Oldest Surviving Film — and the Real Father of Cinema

The Last Passenger Pigeon

In the Spring of 1860, a flock estimated at 3.7 billion Passenger Pigeons flew over Ontario. Eleven years later…

John Dee’s mirror

Made from obsidian and used by him for what he called “angelic communications”, John Dee’s mirror did no small amount of damage…

The Manchester Moth

A scientific conundrum that survives to this day…

When amateur collector Robert Cribb discovered strange yellow and brown moths on Kersal Moor near Manchester in 1829, he had no idea that he’d stumbled upon a scientific conundrum that survives to this day. Unable to…

America’s Loneliest Road

Mao Zedong’s ‘Four Pests’ campaign

Mao Zedong’s ‘Four Pests’ campaign in 1958 caused the near-extinction of the Eurasian Tree Sparrow…

The Alfred Denny Museum

Since opening its doors to students in 1905, the Alfred Denny Zoology Museum at Sheffield University remained a…

Adolphe Millot’s natural history posters

Adolphe Millot (1857–1921) was the senior illustrator at Paris’s Muséum national d’histoire naturelle. He painted…