Topic description and stories

Spirit Trumpet, Manchester, 1920s

Ectoplasm, spirit trumpets and paintings from Pompeii: 600 years of Curious Objects

03 Nov 2016

Why does one of the world’s great research libraries have ‘ectoplasm’, a spirit trumpet and beard hair posted to Charles Darwin among its eight...

Read more
Charles Darwin

Lines of Thought: From Darwin to DNA

29 Jul 2016

Darwin’s stuffed pigeons, the letter which first coined the term ‘genetics’ and a paper by Crick and Watson which helped decode DNA all feature in...

Read more

World first as 3,000-year-old Chinese oracle bones go 3D

21 Mar 2016

A 3000-year-old ox bone - inscribed with the earliest-known example of Chinese writing - has become the world's first 'oracle bone' to be scanned and...

Read more