Cambridge University Library Celebrates 600th Anniversary

Cambridge University Library is celebrating its 600th anniversary with an exhibition featuring its most valuable treasures, including Halley’s handwritten notebook with his original drawing of the comet path, Darwin’s first sketch of his primate tree from ‘On the Origin of Species’ and pictures of stars viewed clearly for the first time through Galileo’s hand-made telescope.

Cambridge University Library also has two copies of the Gutenberg Bible which started the print revolution. The first edition of Newton’s Principia with the scientist’s feverish notes is the highlight of ‘Lines of Thought: Discoveries that Changed the World.’

Many works have never been displayed and it will also include a 2nd-century fragment of Homer’s Odyssey, Stephen Hawking’s draft of ‘A Brief History of Time’ and a 2,000-year-old copy of the Ten Commandments.

To find out more about 600th-anniversary celebrations, visit the Cambridge University Library website.

Tina Engstrom

This year sees the three hundredth anniversary of the death of William Penn and London’s Blue Badge Tourist Guides are conducting tours themed on the great Quaker and one of the few individuals to have an American state named after him – Pennsylvania. The name comes from that of the Penn family combined with the word ‘sylvania’, which means ‘woodland’. There is also an English village of that name which tour groups pass through when returning from one of the most popular day trips from London to Bath and Stonehenge.

26 January 2017

Top 10 Things to See at UNESCO World Heritage Site Stonehenge

There are thousands of World Heritage Sites recognised and listed by UNESCO, but there are very few as intriguing, enigmatic and awe-inspiring as Stonehenge. Stonehenge is one of the wonders of the world, the best-known prehistoric monument in Britain if not in Europe. A stone circle, built almost 5,000 years ago, it still inspires with its size and construction methods. Visitors have to travel to Wiltshire to experience it but it is a journey well worth doing.