Lucy is the common name of AL 288-1, the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton discovered on November 30, 1974 by the International Afar Research Expedition (IARE; director: Maurice Taieb, co-directors: Donald Johanson and Yves C...

Neanderthals were archaic humans that became extinct about 40,000 years ago. They seem to have appeared in Europe and later expanded into Southwest, Central and Northern Asia. There, they left hundreds of stone tool assemblages. Almost all...

Thera, or the modern island of Santorini, located sixty-nine miles north of the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea, was devastated by a volcanic eruption sometime in the 15th century BC. The eruption was one the the most powerful in the past...

Pompeii is a ruined and partially buried Roman town-city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the comune of Pompei. Along with Herculaneum, its sister city, Pompeii was destroyed, and completely buried,...

In 1577 begint op de leeftijd van 63 jaar de Scheveninger Adriaen Coenensz aan zijn Visboek. In drie jaar tijd verzamelt hij daarin allerlei wetenswaardigheden over de zee, de kusten en kustwateren, de visgronden en de zeedieren. Hij schrij...

Tulip mania was a period in the Dutch Golden Age during which contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulip reached extraordinarily high levels and then dramatically collapsed in February 1637. It is ge...

In the year 1598 AD, Portuguese sailors landing on the shores of the island of Mauritius discovered a previously unknown species of bird, the Dodo. Having been isolated by its island location from contact with humanity, the dodo greeted the...

Jean-Baptiste de la Marck, often just known as "Lamarck", was a French soldier, naturalist, academic and an early proponent of the idea that evolution occurred and proceeded in accordance with natural laws. In the modern era, Lamarck is re...

The 1755 Lisbon earthquake, also known as the Great Lisbon Earthquake, took place on November 1, 1755, at around 9:40 in the morning. The earthquake was followed by a tsunami and fires, which caused near-total destruction of Lisbon in Portu...

Kew Gardens (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) is the world's largest collection of living plants. Founded in 1840 from the exotic garden at Kew Park in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, UK, its living collections include more than 30,0...

Mount Tambora (or Tomboro) is an active stratovolcano, also known as a composite volcano, on Sumbawa island, Indonesia. Tambora erupted in 1815 with a rating of seven on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, making it the largest eruption since t...

Gregor Johann Mendel was a Austrian priest and scientist, and is often called the father of genetics for his study of the inheritance of traits in pea plants. Mendel showed that the inheritance of traits follows particular laws, which were...

Sir Henry Alexander Wickham was a British explorer. He later claimed in publicity that he was responsible for stealing about 70,000 seeds from the rubber-bearing tree, Hevea brasiliensis, in the Santarém area of Brazil in 1876. However ther...

Yellowstone National Park is a national park located primarily in the U.S. state of Wyoming, although it also extends into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March...

Krakatoa is a volcanic island in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. It has erupted repeatedly, massively and with disastrous consequences throughout recorded history. The best known eruption culminated in a series of ma...