50 Years Ago

The Leningrad astronomer Dr Nikolai Kozyrev has made another remarkable spectrographic observation of the Moon’s vulcanism, according to Novosti. It purports to link earthquakes on the Earth, particularly in the United Arab Republic and off the coast of Japan on March 31, with the venting of gases from the Aristarchus crater on the Moon on the following day (April 1). Dr Kozyrev is said to hold that this shows that the Moon “responded” to the earthquakes. Dr Kozyrev is also quoted as saying: “My investigations dealt with the Aristarchus crater. Two spectrograms of the inner slope of the crater … showed an unusual red spot approximately one to two km across … after measurements of the spectrograms obtained by the Crimean observatory, it was established for the first time that this spot is the result of an escape of gases — molecular nitrogen and cyanic gas.”

From Nature 3 May 1969

100 Years Ago

A snowstorm of unusual severity … occurred generally over the British Isles on Sunday, April 27, and in the south-east of England the storm was particularly severe … In London snow commenced at about 1 p.m. after somewhat heavy rain, and it thoroughly covered the ground by 3 p.m. The depth of snow by the early morning of April 28 in the north of London was 12 in. to 15 in. … The snowfall occasioned much dislocation of the telegraph and telephone services, and the rapid melting of the snow caused floods in many parts. Temperature on April 27 was abnormally low for so late in the season, the thermometer in London during the afternoon standing at about freezing point. Agriculturists and fruit-growers have suffered somewhat badly.

From Nature 1 May 1919