50 Years Ago

A cow is a cow is a one-bar fire and a desalination machine; according to a handout from the Ministry of Agriculture, twenty cows give off the equivalent of 20 kilowatts of heat an hour, which equals the output of 20 one-bar electric fires. In the same interval the twenty bovids perspire 10 pints of moisture between them. Why the ministry does its sums in scores of cows instead of units is not clear unless it hopes thereby to woo farmers gently to decimalization.

From Nature 7 February 1970

100 Years Ago

With the assistance of the Air Ministry … Lord Northcliffe has been able to arrange, on behalf of the Times, for an attempted flight from Cairo to Cape Town, a distance of more than five thousand miles. This journey from one end of the continent of Africa to the other, and traversing country the nature of a large part of which is little known, is of particular interest to the scientific world in view of the fact that Dr. P. Chalmers Mitchell, secretary of the Zoological Society of London, is taking part in it as passenger and observer. The enterprise will thus not only test the practicability of the air route from Cairo to the Cape, but also doubtless lead to valuable scientific observations being made during the flight. The aeroplane left England on January 24 and arrived in Cairo on February 3. The machine is a Vickers-Vimy commercial aeroplane similar to those used for the flights across the Atlantic and to Australia, and it carries a crew of four in addition to the passenger. Dr. Chalmers Mitchell is carrying an autograph letter from the King to Lord Buxton, Governor-General of South Africa, and we hope that he will be able to deliver it in twelve days or so after a successful end to what is a pioneer effort in scientific exploration from the air.

From Nature 5 February 1920