Michael Ventris dies in tragic circumstances in a car accident. He had decoded Linear B a few years earlier: in 1953, he had given a public lecture on the decoding of the Linear B script found on clay tablets in Crete in 1900 inside the Palace of Knossos. Ventris notices that certain sequences of symbols appear frequently, and hypothesizes they are the names of important cities such as Amnisos, Knossos, and Tulissos. He thus identifies eight signs. This is a huge step forward. Other words similar to Ancient Greek will later be understood, thanks also to the contribution of John Chadwick. Finally, it will be understood that around 1450 BC, the Mycenaeans conquered the Minoans, imposing their language, thus transforming Linear A, which was an independent language, into Linear B, which was instead heavily influenced by Ancient Greek. The next day, June 25, 1952, the decoding of Linear-B was published in the Times, alongside the article on the conquest of Everest.
