Plate tectonics: a memoir
In 2003 the historian Naomi Oreskes published Plate Tectonics: an Insider’s History of the Modern Theory of the Earth. But what of those who were not insiders? How did it seem to them?
Revolution 1830
Following his return to France in 1829 from serving on the Astrolabe during Dumont d’Urvilles’s first voyage as expedition commander, Gaimard continued to write to his former commander on the Uranie, Louis de Freycinet. Two of his letters described the July revolution in 1830 Paris and its aftermath.
The playwright in Car No 11
Amongst the doomed passengers on the Taggart Comet in Atlas Shrugged was “a sniveling little neurotic who wrote cheap little plays into which, as a social message, he inserted cowardly little obscenities”.
Oreskes’ errors
On 12 May 2025 the Earth Science historian Naomi Oreskes delivered a Royal Institution lecture with the title ‘Rethinking the origins of plate tectonics’. The advance publicity suggested that she was about to overturn the whole history of that theory. Was that true?
Children on a train
There seems to have been little room for children in Ayn Rand’s ‘philosophy’. Reportedly, when asked if ‘children’ have any ‘rights’, she replied that they don’t.
Admiral Manby announces
In October 1825, Volume XX of the Asiatic Journal carried an announcement by Admiral Thomas Manby of the probable discovery of relics of the LaPérouse. expedition. But from where did Manby get his information?