Ancient mysteries

THERE’S A POWERFUL symmetry between car engines and watch movements. Zenith’s El Primero with its 36,000 vibrations per hour (5Hz) beat rate is the Watchworld equivalent of the Type 26 Elan’s 1558cc t

On 1 September 1939, Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers found himself in Berlin to take part in a European conference about telephone systems. Germany invaded Poland the same day. Flowers and a fellow

Chartarumludentist Anthony Wilkins [FT458:63] may wish to visit China. While living there in 2005 I found so many discarded playing cards on the ground that I was able to assemble a unique deck of 52

Carthage burned for six days. After three long years of siege, in the spring of 146 BC Roman soldiers finally broke through the city’s defences and began to slaughter the population. But still the Car

The great naturalist Sir Richard Owen coined the term “dinosaur”, wrote the first scientific descriptions of dinosaurs and was a founder of the first Natural History Museum (NHM) and its first directo

In short, yes: the Victorians did indeed think eating mummified remains pilfered from ancient Egyptian tombs was a good idea, although they did not come up with the idea themselves. The morbid practic