Wonder 01
The Dancing Plague 1518
Strasbourg · Frau Troffea and some four hundred dancers.
In July 1518 Frau Troffea began dancing in the street and continued for days. Within a week three dozen had joined her; the chronicles eventually count around four hundred. Magistrates prescribed more dancing, with hired pipers and a cleared guildhall.
Remarkably, the cure failed. Deaths from exhaustion and stroke are recorded through August. The mania ended in September. The musicians were paid 100 florins, per the city accounts.
Papers. Strasbourg council minutes and chronicles of 1518; burial registers; Paracelsus on the dancing sickness.
Wonder 02
The Defenestration That Failed 1618
Prague Castle · two regents and a secretary, thrown from a window.
On 23 May 1618 Protestant estates seized the Catholic regents Jaroslav Bořita of Martinice and Vilém Slavata, with secretary Philip Fabricius, and threw all three from the third-storey window of the Bohemian Chancellery, a fall of some 21 metres.
All three survived. Catholic accounts credit the Virgin. Protestant accounts credit a dung heap. The dung heap is undisputed; it lay beneath the window. The incident opened the Thirty Years' War. The window survives.
Papers. Contemporary pamphlets and broadsheets (1618); Slavata's own memoir; records of the Bohemian Chancellery. See also Defenestration in the Remarkable Lexicon.
Wonder 03
The Child and the Sea-Dragon 1811–1812
Lyme Regis, Dorset · Mary Anning, aged twelve, fossil-hunter.
In 1811 Joseph Anning found a large skull in the cliffs. Mary Anning, aged twelve, traced the remainder and excavated a 5.2-metre ichthyosaur skeleton, sold for £23.
The specimen, eventually in the British Museum, proved that vast reptiles had lived in the seas. Miss Anning was not admitted to the Geological Society, on grounds of sex. The reptile was admitted without objection.
Papers. Anning correspondence; Everard Home, Philosophical Transactions (1814, 1819); specimen NHMUK PV R1158, Natural History Museum, London.
Wonder 04
The Iron Through the Head 1848
Cavendish, Vermont · Phineas Gage, foreman, and his tamping iron.
On 13 September 1848 a blasting charge drove Gage's iron tamping rod through his left jaw and out through the frontal bone. He regained consciousness within minutes and conversed with his men.
Gage lived until 21 May 1860, nearly twelve years, working latterly as a stagecoach driver in Chile. His personality was altered; his survival was not. The iron is 1.1 metres long and is kept with his skull.
Papers. Harlow (1848; 1868); Bigelow (1850); skull and iron, Warren Anatomical Museum, Harvard.
Wonder 05
Wash Your Hands 1847
Vienna General Hospital · Dr Ignaz Semmelweis, obstetrician.
Semmelweis observed that the clinic staffed by doctors had a maternal mortality from childbed fever of around 10 per cent, while the clinic staffed by midwives stood near 4 per cent. He inferred that doctors carried the sickness from the dissecting room, and ordered chlorine handwashing in May 1847.
Mortality in the doctors' clinic fell to around 1–2 per cent within months. His colleagues received this result with professional calm and dismissed him in 1849. Handwashing is now, on reflection, considered sound.
Papers. Vienna hospital mortality tables 1841–1849; Semmelweis, Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever (1861).
Wonder 06
The Ship That Sank and Lost No One 1914–1916
Antarctica to South Georgia · Shackleton and twenty-seven men.
Endurance was beset in January 1915 and crushed in October. The twenty-eight men camped on ice, then sailed three open boats to Elephant Island. Shackleton took five men in the James Caird for South Georgia, 1,300 kilometres across the Southern Ocean, in sixteen days.
On 30 August 1916 the Chilean vessel Yelcho recovered all twenty-two men left on Elephant Island. Total lost from the Endurance party: none. Frostbite was extensive. Complaints were few.
Papers. Ships' logs; Hurley photographs and film; Shackleton, South (1919); Worsley and Wild diaries.
Wonder 07
The Treacle Flood 1919
Boston, Massachusetts · a burst molasses tank, 15 January.
At about 12.30 p.m. a 15-metre tank holding some 8.7 million litres of molasses failed. The wave demolished buildings, drowned horses, and tore a fire station from its base. Twenty-one people were killed and about 150 injured.
The tank had leaked so badly that children collected the seepage, and the company had painted it brown to conceal it. The court auditor, after 25,000 pages of testimony, found the company liable.
Papers. Boston Globe and Boston Post, January 1919; coroner's reports; Col. Hugh Ogden's auditor's report, 1925.
Wonder 08
The Signal 1977
Delaware, Ohio · the Big Ear radio telescope, volunteer Jerry Ehman.
On 15 August 1977 the Ohio State radio telescope recorded a 72-second narrowband signal from the direction of Sagittarius, thirty times stronger than background. Ehman circled the printout and wrote in the margin: "Wow!"
The signal matched the expected signature of an interstellar transmission and never repeated, despite repeated searches. Its cause remains unknown. The printout survives. The exclamation does also.
Papers. Ohio State Radio Observatory computer printout, 15 August 1977; Ehman memoranda; observatory logs, now Ohio History Connection.
Wonder 09
The War Against Birds 1932
Campion, Western Australia · soldiers, machine-guns, and some 20,000 emus.
In November 1932, at farmers' request, Major G. P. W. Meredith deployed soldiers with Lewis guns against emus damaging wheat. The emus dispersed at gunfire, outran the guns, and absorbed bullets without evident discouragement. One gun jammed. A truck broke.
After about a month and fewer than 1,000 emus killed, the Army withdrew. The emus retained the field.
Papers. Australian military reports, November–December 1932; Commonwealth parliamentary debates; contemporary press.
Wonder 10
The Army in the Well 1974
Lintong, Shaanxi, China · six farmers digging a well.
In March 1974 farmers drilling for water struck fragments of terracotta. Archaeologists uncovered Pit 1: an army of life-sized soldiers guarding the tomb of the First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang (d. 210 BC), each face distinct, originally painted.
Estimates exceed 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots, and 670 horses. The farmers had found one of the largest tombs in history while looking for water. They found water elsewhere.
Papers. Excavation reports, Shaanxi Archaeological Institute, from 1974; the pits themselves, in situ.
Wonder 11
Wonderful Things 1922
Valley of the Kings, Egypt · Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon.
On 4 November 1922 Carter's workmen cleared the steps to the sealed tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamun (c. 1341–1323 BC), intact for over 3,000 years. On 26 November Carter pierced the doorway, held up a candle, and, asked if he saw anything, replied: "Yes, wonderful things."
The tomb held over 5,000 objects, including the 11-kilogramme gold mask. The clearance took ten years to catalogue. Carter's canary was eaten by a cobra on the day of opening, which the workmen considered significant.
Papers. Carter's journals and The Tomb of Tut.Ankh.Amen (1923–1933); Griffith Institute archive, Oxford; objects, Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
Wonder 12
The Letters from Vesuvius AD 79
Misenum and Stabiae, Bay of Naples · Pliny the Younger, aged seventeen.
On 24 August AD 79 (by the received dating) Vesuvius erupted. Pliny the Younger watched from across the bay; his uncle, Pliny the Elder, sailed toward the cloud to observe and to rescue, and died at Stabiae. Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried.
The younger Pliny described the pine-shaped cloud, the darkness, and the panic in two letters to Tacitus some twenty-five years later. They survive entire. Eruptions of this kind are still termed Plinian, after the uncle who sailed into it.
Papers. Pliny, Letters VI.16 and VI.20; Tacitus; the buried cities themselves.