Victorian Era Innovations & Mysteries
Britain's restless 19th century: a programmer before computers, a theory that shook the church, a lamp in a war hospital, a novelist with a man's name, a lost expedition and an unsolved murder.
- victorian
- innovation
- mystery
- industrial
- britain
- 19th-century
Some of the stories included
The Origin of the Bank HolidayHow one Victorian banker's 1871 Act gave an overworked nation a break by inventing the bank holiday.
The 1854 Pump Handle That Ended a PlagueIn 1854, Dr. John Snow used a map of cholera deaths to trace an outbreak to a single London water pump, challenging dominant medical theories.
The Reign of Queen VictoriaThe story of Queen Victoria's 63-year reign, which defined an era of empire, industry, and immense social change for Britain.
The First Transatlantic Telegraph Cable, 1858The 12-year saga to lay the first transatlantic cable, from its 1854 inception to the lasting success of the Great Eastern in 1866.
Jack the RipperIn 1888, a killer terrorized London's East End, exposing the city's deep social divides and creating an enduring mystery.
Florence Nightingale’s War for Clean HospitalsFlorence Nightingale's work in the Crimean War hospitals at Scutari, and how she used statistics to show that most soldiers' deaths came from preventable disease, changing nursing and hospital sanitation.
Ada Lovelace: The First Computer ProgrammerThe life of Ada Lovelace, whose 1843 notes on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine set out the first published computer program and foresaw machines that could work with more than numbers.
George EliotThe life of Mary Ann Evans, who wrote as George Eliot, from her break with her father's church to Adam Bede, Middlemarch and her unconventional partnership with George Henry Lewes.
Charles Darwin and the Origin of SpeciesHow Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution, from a fossil skull in 1832 to the publication of 'On the Origin of Species'.
The Franklin ExpeditionSir John Franklin's 1845 Arctic expedition to find the Northwest Passage: how both ships and all 129 men were lost, what searchers and Inuit testimony revealed, and the wrecks found in 2014 and 2016.
More like this
Simonides and the Memory PalaceA poet stepped out of a banquet at Crannon, the stone roof fell on everyone inside, and the memory palace was born.
The Black PrinceThe eldest son of King Edward III, Edward of Woodstock was a famed commander at Crécy and Poitiers who died before he could inherit the throne.
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