Category: phd

Uruguay win first FIFA World Cup, 1930

Founded in 1904, FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association: ‘International Federation of Association Football’) soon fell into dispute with the International Olympic Committee about the sport’s position in the Olympic…

Denis Diderot died, 1784

Born on 5th October 1713 in the city of Langres in eastern France, Diderot was destined for a life in one of the professions, initially as a clergyman and then…

Sir Richard Arkwright died, 1792

Richard Arkwright, pioneer of industrialisation, was born on 23rd December 1732 in Preston, Lancashire. The son of a poor tailor, Richard had no formal education and became an apprentice barber.…

Kon Tiki expedition ended, 1947

In the early 1940s, a Norwegian ethnographer called Thor Heyerdahl proposed that the peoples of Polynesia originated in the Americas rather than Asia. In order to test his theory, he…

First ascent of Mont Blanc, 1786

In the mid-eighteenth century the Swiss aristocrat and naturalist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure became a regular visitor the French town of Chamonix, which sits at the foot of Mont Blanc, the…

First Scouting camp ended, 1907

In 1899 Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Baden-Powell published Aids to Scouting, a manual of reconnaissance skills based on his military experiences in South Africa. That same year, Baden-Powell commanded a force of…