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Hair analysis of the Bonaparte family finds high levels of arsenic in the hair of Napoleon’s wife, Josephine, and other family members: arsenic was everywhere at the time… This partly refutes the hypothesis of poisoning the emperor on the island of St. Helena, but two

group of students from Appalachian State University scientifically understand why Diet Coke turns into a geyser when it comes into contact with Mentos candies: the porous surface of the candies acts as a catalyst, like a net that captures the bubbles dissolved in the Coke,

The KGB used polonium to assassinate former spy Litvinenko, although thallium was initially thought to be the culprit, but the KGB used it to poison another Russian dissident, Nikolai Khokhlov, in 1957.

Using data from NASA’s Aqua satellite, Duane Walizer (JPL), Baijun Tian (CalTech) discover the Madden-Julian Oscillation, a disturbance that covers half of the Earth’s equator mainly over the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific, with a period of 40-50 days.

few months after the Euro went into circulation, Freek Sujver and Andres Mejerink of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, irradiated some banknotes with ultraviolet light and recorded the bands of color they emitted. The red light they saw was due to Europium ions,

Congo (formerly Zaire) also owns 60% of Coltan, a mineral based on Tantalum and Niobium, much sought after for the manufacture of cell phones. The rapidly increasing demand for Coltan, and the sudden enormous availability of liquidity, is thus mixed with the dirty conflict underway,

Korean cargo ship loses 34,000 hockey gloves during a storm in the Pacific; the path of the gloves, which will be found everywhere in the following years, from Vancouver to Vietnam, will greatly help oceanographers around the world to trace the path of marine currents

Nobel Prize in Physics to William A. Fowler for his studies on the formation of chemical elements in the universe

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar completes a modern exposition of Newton’s Principia Mathematica, in his “Newton’s Principia for the General Reader” (although what he means by the general reader is certainly not what the general reader means…). Euler had done a first complete work in 1735 in “Mechanics”.

A sample of the wallpaper from Napoleon’s rooms on St. Helena, gold and Scheele’s green, is found and analyzed, which was made at the time from copper arsenide or copper aceto-arsenate. The article is published in Nature and confirms the presence of arsenic in the

Russian chemist Ilya Priggine wins the Nobel Prize for demonstrating that in non-isolated systems operating far from thermodynamic equilibrium (such as living beings), irreversible processes can increase their organization by moving further and further away from thermodynamic equilibrium. The properties of dissipative structures (i.e. irreversible

In the USA, bromide salts, previously used as generic sedatives (so much so that Bromide still often comes up in jokes about sexual performance failures), are withdrawn from the market. They are withdrawn because of dangerous side effects known with the diagnosis of bromism.

Misner, Thorne, Wheeler publish, through Freeman, the famous tome “Gravitation”

An article by chemist FJ Donahoe on Polywater (polywater, or water II, or anomalous water) appears in the journal Nature, considering it “the most dangerous polymer on Earth”. The story begins in the quiet Soviet town of Kostroma, where in 1962 Nikolai Fedyakin discovers, or

The journal Chemical Abstract publishes an article on tobacco mosaic virus. It is probably the molecule with the longest name ever pronounced (and some even say it is the longest word): a good 1185 letters. It is C785H1220N212O248S2, better known as: “glutaminylphenylalanylvalylphenylalanylleucylserylseryl valyltryptophylalanylaspartylprolylisoleucylglutamylleucylleucylasparaginylvalylcysteinylthreonylserylseryl leucylglycylasparaginylglutaminylphenylalanylglutaminylthreonylglutaminylglutaminylalanylarginylthreo nylthreonylglutaminylvalylglutaminylglutaminylphenylalanylserylglutaminylvalyltryptophyllysylprolylphenyla

Arnol’d (Kolmogorov’s student) proves that the approximate series solving the 3-body problem converges or not depending on the initial conditions

Norfolk in Suffolk, England. A military plane with 70Kg with a special pigment of cadmium and zinc sulphide, releases it at 150m of height downwind of the city. On the ground some officials for the chemical defense of Porton Down in Whittington, position themselves in

Canada. Chemist Neil Bartlett creates the first noble gas compound in the laboratory. It is an orange crystalline solid, based on Xenon. The reaction occurs at room temperature.

Sweden. An analysis carried out by Sten Forshufvud on Napoleon’s hair samples, discovers high levels of arsenic. This supports the hypothesis of a poisoning of the emperor. Then in 1982 a sample of the wallpaper from Napoleon’s rooms, colored gold and green by Scheele, obtained

Japan. Doctor Noboru Hagino publishes his findings on the causes of the widespread disease among the families of miners at the Kamioke mine. In 1972, the mining company will compensate the 178 survivors. Cadmium will remain in the collective imagination of the Japanese for generations,

The KGB uses thallium to assassinate Russian dissident Nikolai Khokhlov. On other occasions it will also use polonium, as in 2006 with Litvinenko in London.

Mendelevium is the first element to be synthesized one atom at a time. To date, no amount has ever been generated that is visible to the human eye. The discoverer is the usual Glenn Seaborg, with many other elements under his belt.

Andrei Kolmogorov dusts off the 3-body problem

Glenn Seaborg synthesizes Californium. He is probably the greatest discoverer of elements (or inventor since those he “discovered” are not found in nature): Plutonium, Curium, Americium, Berkelium, Californium in a span of only 10 years.

Glenn Seaborg Synthesizes Berkelium

Japan. Doctor Noboru Hagino begins to seriously study the disease of the families of the Kamioke Mine, scientifically, and by superimposing the epidemiological and water map of the area he discovers the cause in the mine. It is Cadmium, which flows downstream in the hydrogeological

Grand Rapids, Michigan, becomes the first city in the world to have its water supply fluoridated. Today, more than half of Americans drink fluoridated water, making the United States one of the most fluoridated populations in the world. The initial test in Grand Rapids with

Glenn Seaborg Synthesizes Americium and Curium

Portugal. The only exportable good of the country is Tungsten. The reason is that this element is used by the Nazis for steel of armaments (in substitution of the Molybdenum of the Big Bertha of the previous conflict, Molybdenum which is a monopoly of the

Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger publishes “What is Life?” in which he examines the behavior of entropy in living things. He argues that they borrow order from the environment and repay it by making the environment even more disordered than it was before.

Auschwitz, now Poland. Primo Levi, a prisoner of the camp, manages to steal some bars of cerium, which he knows well as a chemist, with which he makes lighters that he then sells, exploiting the well-known property of cerium to produce sparks when rubbed. This

The one-day-old T2 tanker SS Schenectady, just returned to port after a sea trial, suddenly splits in two from top to bottom due to a crack in the steel that was not stopped by any “crack stopper”

Nikola Tesla (Cyrillic: Никола Тесла) (Smiljan, July 10, 1856 – New York, January 7, 1943) was a Serbian physicist, inventor, and engineer who became a naturalized American citizen in 1891. Tesla is best known for his revolutionary work and numerous contributions to the field of

Glenn Seaborg isolates Plutonium for the first time. It is also the first time that any artificial element, that is, one that does not exist in nature, is synthesized in its pure form. The first time that the human eye can observe an artificial element.

Keynes, at a lecture at the Royal Society Club, paints for the first time a different and controversial image of Isaac Newton, as a devotee of alchemy and in search of the philosopher’s stone

Glenn Seaborg synthesizes Plutonium, although it will only be isolated in 1942

The German army invades Denmark, where Niel Bohr is staying. He has already donated his gold Nobel medal to charity, but he keeps the two Nobel medals of his German Jewish colleagues Max von Laue (X-ray diffraction) and James Franck (energy quantization). Every gold object

Marguerite Perey wins the Nobel Prize for the discovery of Francium. She is the third woman to win it after Marie and Irene Curie.

Fischer and Tropsch of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry market synthetic gasoline produced from carbon monoxide and hydrogen for the German company Brabag. During the Nazi war effort, 9% of the military gasoline and 25% of the gasoline in German cars will be of

Irene Curie, daughter of Marie Curie and her first pupil, wins the Nobel Prize. She is the second woman to win it, after her mother, also in this case together with her husband. In 1939 Marguerite Perey will also win it for the discovery of

The American scientist Irving Langmuir in collaboration with the scientist Katherine Blodgett and based on the studies of another scientist, Agnes Pockels, creates the Langmuir tank in which by releasing a known quantity of oily material into water this expands in a stain until it

Charles Richter (of the Californian Institute of Technology – CalTech), publishes in the Bulletin of the Sesmological Society of America, the famous article “An instrumental Earthquake Magnitude Scale” in which he establishes the Richter Scale for measuring the energy of an earthquake.

Russel proves that the universe contains mostly hydrogen

new elevator is built into the White Star ocean liner Majestic: the stresses are concentrated on the sharp corner of the new opening for the elevator, opening a crack that continues until it accidentally meets a porthole that, thanks to its rounded profile, acts as

Starting with Switzerland, many countries are starting to add iodine to table salt, to prevent birth defects and mental retardation, caused by iodine deficiency.

Fritz Haber wins the Nobel Prize. During World War I, Germany is under embargo and cannot obtain saltpeter, which is essential for making gunpowder. Saltpeter can be replaced by ammonia, which Haber, with his invention, manages to extract from the air. Haber also pioneered the

Germany. A 150mm projectile filled with Xylene Bromide, a very caustic tear gas, is ready. It is named Weisskreuz (white cross). In this test (as in the first one on the English) the French are spared: 18,000 Weisskeruze are dropped on the Russians, but the

Colorado, United States. Molybdenum is highly sought after by the war industry, especially the German one, since cannons like Big Bertha suffer from deformation due to high temperatures, a defect that disappears if the steel is Molybdenum (which melts at 2600C against 1500C for Iron).

Russo-German Eastern Front. Fritz Haber, the German chemist who synthesized and used Chlorine at Ypres in Belgium, leaves for the Eastern Front to prepare the same deadly weapon of mass destruction. Chlorine tears open the blood vessels of the lungs and the victim drowns in

Chlorine, in addition to being used as a chemical weapon (initially only by the Germans), was also used as an additive to drinking water to make it safe for troops. Some say it saved more lives this way than it did as a chemical weapon.

Ypres, Belgium. Chlorine synthesized at military level by the German chemist Fritz Haber is used against the Allied troops, especially the French and Algerians. It consists of 5000 cylinders placed along a 7km stretch of front and opened as soon as the wind is favorable

In a perverse choice, the first German chemical weapons test is carried out on English troops, who have never used gas before. However, the wind does not cooperate (or cooperates with the English), and disperses the gases in the wrong direction, and the British soldiers,

Albert Einstein becomes a professor at the University of Berlin; the same year he begins divorce proceedings from his wife Mileva

The Danish Niels Bohr develops the model of the atom with nucleus and electrons (planetary model)

Joachimsthal (now Jachymov in the Czech Republic). The Radium Palace Hotel opens its doors, which, taking advantage of the beneficial effect of radium in the treatment of certain tumors in controlled doses and the wave of popular enthusiasm, offers visitors radioactive spa treatments. The waters

Japan. Doctors treating families of miners at the Kamioke Mine (which would be used a century later for the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector) diagnosed the disease itai-itai (ouch-ouch), where 98% of cases were women, with bone pain and fragility. In 1946, Noboru Hagino began to seriously

Superconductivity phenomenon discovered for the first time in Mercury

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovers superconductivity in Mercury at 4K

Nobel Prize in Physics to Van der Waals for the equation of state of gases and liquids

Nobel Prize in Physics to Guglielmo Marconi

Trieste. Ludwig Boltzmann hangs himself while his wife and daughter are swimming in the Adriatic during a vacation. Boltzmann is the first to understand that the arrow of time appears only when there is heat. And that therefore the concept of time is linked to

Robert A. Millikan accurately measures the electron’s charge

French inventor Georges Claude begins experiments on tubes filled with neon and subjected to electrical discharges.

The Frenchman Leon-Philippe Teisserenc de Bort, travelling in a hot air balloon, discovers the tropopause, or the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere, and also discovers the presence of the ozone layer.

United States. Welsh immigrant Ellis Hughes finds a huge iron meteorite, coincidentally on Oregon Iron and Steel Company land. It is a 15-ton meteorite that is now on display at the Natural History Museum as the Willamette Meteor.

Paris. Eugene Anatole Demarcay isolates Europium, a rare earth. Europium is the most reactive of the rare earths, so much so that it must be preserved in oil to prevent it from catching fire. It will be used in Euro banknotes (perhaps because of its

Paris World’s Fair. More than 50 million people come to see exhibits from 40 nations, including rare earth samples.

Pierre and Marie Curie receive 10 tons of radioactive waste from plechbenda, a uranium mineral. These are bags of brown powder mixed with pine needles, a waste that is already more radioactive than the base mineral. It is treated 20 kg at a time in

Pierre Curie writes in the laboratory register the letters Po for Polonium, a name given in honor of Marie’s beloved homeland, Poland. However, the element is still linked to bismuth and barium, in plechbenda, a uranium mineral, in which they will eventually find radium in

Aluminum is worth about one hundredth of silver. In 1855, then, an industrial process was developed for extracting it from bauxite for the first time, it cost 12 times as much as silver. The use and diffusion of aluminum, from specific became common and finally

William Ramsay, professor of Chemistry at University College London, discovers Xenon, or the alien. Among those who are doubtful about this plethora of new elements that will create a whole new column in the table of the Elements, there is Mendeleev himself. They will be

William Ramsay, professor of Chemistry at University College London, discovers Neon. The name is suggested by his thirteen-year-old son Willie. (He actually suggests Novum, but tradition is to give a name with a Greek root and not a Latin one, so he chooses Neon.)

J(oseph) J(ohn) Thomson discovers that a cathode ray tube emits charged particles with a mass 1/1800 the mass of a hydrogen atom

Australia. In 1893, Irishman Patrick Hannan and two other traveling companions camped in a makeshift place because one of their horses had lost its shoe. They discovered a gold deposit so rich that they collected nuggets from the ground. They asked for an official concession,

Becquerel and Curie discover rays emitted by natural elements (uranium, thorium, radium)

Svante Arrhenius builds the greenhouse effect theory

William Ramsey discovers the first inert gas: Argon and shouts “Fuck Argo!” (no, that’s not true… it’s just a quote). This is yet another challenge (soon won) for Mendeleev’s table, since it is located immediately to the right of the last element in the table.

The French physician and physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey with a series of snapshots of a cat falling upside down, righting itself on the fly, discovers the exact mechanism. The cat does not behave like a rigid body, but alternately rotates the front and back part of

Aspeth Hall proposes to modify Newton’s formula for Universal Gravitation by replacing the exponent 2 of GmM/r^2 with 2.00000016 to accommodate certain deviations such as the orbit of Mercury; these deviations will later be explained by Einstein

Australia. The Irishman Patrick Hannan and two other traveling companions, camp in a makeshift place because one of the horses has lost its shoe. They discover a deposit of Gold so rich, that they collect nuggets from the ground. They ask for an official concession,