The uranium experiment that went wrong triggered the discovery of nuclear fission. Image credit – Wikimedia While conducting some meticulous experiments in Berlin towards the end of 1938, two chemists, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, saw something that defied the scientific laws of the period. Following their bombardment of uranium with neutrons, they analyzed the…
Henri Becquerel accidentally uncovered radioactivity by keeping photographic plates in the dark. Image credit – Wikimedia Some of the greatest scientific discoveries started out unexpectedly. One such case was a finding made in 1896 by the French scientist Henri Becquerel during experiments with phosphorescent substances. Photographic plates, which had been wrapped together with uranium salts,…
The chemist licked his fingers after dinner, and uncovered the first artificial sweetener. Image credit – Wikimedia The odd flavor detected while eating dinner sparked one of the greatest innovations in the modern food industry. In 1879, Constantin Fahlberg, a chemist, was experimenting in Ira Remsen’s chemistry laboratory in Johns Hopkins University. He noted that…
Archaeologists unearthed a Roman military camp from the year zero in Frankfurt, challenging the traditional narrative of violent Roman expansion. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons As archaeologists began to explore the luscious gardens of the Bolongaro Palace in Frankfurt, they were hoping to discover historic objects from the 17th century. They instead came across the greatest…
An ancient Spanish coin, minted 2,000 years ago, was mistakenly used as bus fare in Leeds in 1950. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons Imagine opening your wallet after an exhausting commute, only to pull out a couple of normal pennies, only to find a piece of currency once used to circulate through the old Mediterranean. This…
Renovating their English countryside home, Robert and Betty Fooks unearthed a 17th-century coin hoard. Image Credit: Gemini Imagine that you’re browsing through Zillow as you dream of the ideal “fixer-upper” with character. Then you find yourself in a historical house situated in the English countryside. You grab some axes to push down the foundation floor…
In the late 18th century, New York farmer John Masten discovered enormous prehistoric bones in marl pits. Artist Charles Willson Peale acquired these remains, embarking on a monumental effort to excavate and assemble America’s first mounted fossil exhibit. Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons History happens in the strangest of places. For John Masten, a farmer from…
Beneath America’s seemingly simple Great Plains lies a colossal underground freshwater body, the High Plains aquifer, larger than California. This “invisible ocean,” primarily the Ogallala formation, sustains the region’s fertility and agriculture When travelling through the middle of America by automobile, the environment seems almost mesmerisingly simplistic. This is an area defined by amber-coloured fields…
The deep Antarctic drill that pulled up air from a world long before humans. Image credit – Gemini Deep under East Antarctica, scientists are drilling into one of the oldest frozen records in the world. But the ice isn’t the only thing they seek. The air bubbles locked inside it hold many secrets. The Beyond…
Construction work in Pombal, Portugal, unearthed a colossal dinosaur skeleton. This sauropod, possibly Europe’s largest, measured 82 feet long and 39 feet high. Image Credit: Instituto Dom Luiz (Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon) (Portugal) It is usually the most seemingly ordinary things that lead to some of the biggest revelations. In 2017,…
