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The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia (then the Dutch East Indies) occurred today in 1883. The volcano had become active in May but this was the climax of the […]

The French chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was born today in 1743, to a wealthy family in Paris. The son of an attorney at the Parlement of Paris, he […]

Today marks the anniversary of the first recorded person to swim from England to France. Starting from Admiralty Pier in Dover, Captain Matthew Webb made the […]

Ernest Richard Sillifant was baptised at his parent’s home on 29 September 1889 in Halwill. The family were Bible Christians and in the 1891 census, they lived […]

Anyone who has watched the television programme Heir Hunters will realise that the business is all about ‘getting there first’ …. or is it? Being first […]

452! I can hardly believe it… 452 Squirrel(l)s in 1881. Where did they all sprout from? This nifty piece of software – Surname Atlas – maps […]

Tortoise keeping has been popular in the UK for a long time and it is estimated that between the years 1969-1972 approximately 480,000 tortoises were imported […]

Today is a sad day, marking the 27th anniversary of what became known as the Hungerford massacre. Gunman Michael Ryan, armed with two semi-automatic rifles and […]

It’s a crazy world we live in these days. Who would have been able to foresee, when I was in the Brownies, that in thirty years […]