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Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Lunar Module Eagle in the Sea of Tranquility at 20:17 UTC on 20 July 1969. Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface at 02:56 UTC on 21 July 1969. The two astronauts spent 2 hours 31 minutes outside the spacecraft and returned with 21.55 kg of lunar samples.
Read the story →The 1918 influenza pandemic killed approximately 50 million people across three waves from spring 1918 to spring 1920. The death toll exceeded the First World War casualty figure. The "Spanish flu" name reflects neutral Spanish press coverage, not a Spanish origin. The viral strain (H1N1) was reconstructed from preserved Alaskan tissue in 2005.
Read the story →The Spörer Minimum was a sustained reduction in solar activity from approximately 1460 to 1550. The Sun went almost entirely spotless for nine decades. The associated climate effect contributed to the deeper cold of the [Little Ice Age](/articles/little-ice-age), the [collapse of the Norse colony in Greenland](/articles/erik-the-red-greenland), and the harvest failures of late-medieval northern Europe. It is the older and longer cousin of the better-known [Maunder Minimum](/articles/maunder-minimum) of the late 17th century.
Read the story →Mass psychogenic illness — the modern medical term for what older eras called collective madness — has been documented continuously across Europe and the rest of the world for at least seven hundred years. The clinical pattern is the same. The cultural framing changes.
Read the story →Between 1645 and 1715 the surface of the Sun was nearly blank. Sunspot counts dropped to almost zero. Europe froze. Astronomers noticed, then forgot.
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