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One hundred years ago, on 1st July 1921, the Chinese Communist Party was founded. It had its roots in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and at first worked with the Chinese Nationalists. But the Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, turned violently against them in 1927 and for a while the Communists, under Mao Zedong and...

It was 75 years ago, on 22nd July 1946, that the King David Hotel bombing took place in Jerusalem. The Irgun – a militant right-wing Zionist group – bombed the hotel which housed the British administrative headquarters for Palestine, and 91 people were killed, with dozens more injured. The dead and injured were of many...

Lady Diana Spencer – later Princess of Wales – was born 60 years ago, on 1st July 1961 at Sandringham in Norfolk. Twenty years later, on 29th July 1981, she married Prince Charles at St Paul’s Cathedral in London. She died in a car crash in Paris in 1997. Diana was not an academic child,...

The first cloned mammal – Dolly the sheep – was born 25 years ago, on 5th July 1996, at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh. The news was generally greeted with either direct opposition or considerable suspicion. Richard McCormick, a Jesuit priest and professor of Christian ethics at the University of Notre Dame, voiced the feelings of...

It was 15 years ago, on 15th July 2006, that Twitter, the American micro-blogging social network, was launched. The first tweet – or short message – had been sent internally in March that year and was recently sold for over £2 million. The service was originally known as twttr (by analogy with the photo site...

Now here’s something that will send you straight to your kitchen to put the kettle on: the Great British cup of tea may not taste quite so good in the future. It seems that extreme weather and rising temperatures could lead to inferior leaves in the future, according to Christian Aid. Kenya, the world’s foremost...

So says the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). In an effort to restore the plant’s reputation, the RHS has been showcasing the species at its flagship garden in Wisley, Surrey. It hopes to set a new trend, and to get people to stop seeing ivy as ‘the enemy.’ At Wisley you can now see 390 varieties...

All in the month of JUNE The man who invented the saxophone The beginnings of Boots the Chemist The 100th Birthday of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh Remembering Carl Jung What do you think will happen after Covid? Where are our birds? “It is like driving on the moon” ** Editor:  We continue our column...

It was: 175 years ago, on 28th June 1846 that Belgian musical instrument maker Adolphe Sax patented the saxophone. 125 years ago, on 4th June 1896 that Henry Ford completed his first automobile, the Ford Quadricycle, and gave it a test run around Detroit Michigan. It was a simple frame with an engine, two gears,...

It was 175 years ago, on 28th June 1846, that Belgian musical instrument maker Adolphe Sax patented the saxophone. Born Antoine-Joseph in 1814, Sax quickly became known for his brilliant inventiveness and his abrasive personality, but also – to the despair of his mother – for his brushes with death as a child. He fell from...

Jesse Boot, the British pharmacist and philanthropist, died 90 years ago, on 13th June 1931. He turned the Boots Company started by his father John – a former agricultural worker – into a chain of chemists branded ‘Chemists to the Nation’. The 1st Baron Trent, as Jesse became in 1929, sold his controlling interest to American...

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was born 100 years ago on 10th June 1921, on a dining room table in Corfu, at a villa called Mon Repos. He was born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark and always thought of himself as Danish, though he was in line of succession to both thrones. He was...