H.Becquerel found uranium emitted radiation and, in1898, M.Curie extracted minute traces of radium from ore. J.Maxwell predicted electro-magnetic radiation in 1855 and Einstein formulated special relativity; mass could be converted into energy. In 1905, E.Rutherford found radon gas emitted helium nuclei. In 1919, F...
In 1657, Otto von Guericke pumped the air from two hemispheres and eight horses could not pull them apart. Amontons found a volume of air shrank as the temperature fell and realized that it would become zero. In 1774, Joseph Priestley isolated oxygen while Lavoisier released hydrogen and burned this with oxygen to ma...
Jesus and Muhammad adopted the Hebrew's belief in one God and Christianity and Islam spread throughout the world. The Chinese were using gunpowder in the 9th century and, by the 13th , cannon dominated the battlefields. Paper money appeared in China from 1216, as many financial transactions were too large for heavy br...
The Roman Empire began to decline after Germanic tribes crossed the river Rhine in 406 CE. When Constantine III recalled the legions from Britain, three years later, the Angles and Saxons invaded and Britain became known as Angleland. The Visigoths sacked Rome in 410. The Vandals invaded north Africa in 429 and conq...
The arms race began in Mesopotamia with the invention of composite bows, light chariots and crossbows. The Persian (Iranian) emperor tried to conquer Athens in 480 BCE but was delayed by the Spartans at Thermopylae while Greek warships destroyed the Persian fleet. The Macedonian ruler, Alexander the Great, complete...
The first agricultural revolutions began about 10,000 BCE in Egypt, China and Mesopotamia (Iraq). Trading require counting and the first written language; in general use by 2600 BCE. The first epic poem, Gilgamesh, was written in cuneiform. The first alphabet assigned Semitic characters to Egyptian hieroglyphs ab...
About 1.5 billion years ago, the single-celled eukaryotes became the common ancestors of all multicellular plants, animals, and fungi. Fish evolved a primitive lung sac and four limbs, 350 million years ago, so they could crawl between fresh water swamps. About 250 million years ago, the ancestors of all mammals, wer...
Space and time began about 13.7 billion years ago but it consisted almost exclusively of hydrogen until some stars grew sufficiently massive to create the heavier elements in gigantic explosions called supernovae. The Sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago with an orbiting disk of debris that became the Solar System...
Author's note. This work has been largely updated, expanded and superceded by a a series. You will find all the books at https://www.wattpad.com/user/duncmacphun You may read them in any order and by any part (chapter); what ever takes your interest. Duncan MacPhun We are a violent, territorial species and const...