50 years ago

Serengeti Shall Not Die by Dr. Bernhard and Michael Grzimek — This is the book of the film. Despite the many fine illustrations, the book cannot compete with the film in showing the space of the Serengeti National Park and the beauty of its animals in motion ... It is a true adventure story. After the success of their first film “No Room for Wild Animals”, the Grzimeks offered part of its revenues for purchase of land to increase the Serengeti National Park, but were persuaded instead to study the animal populations there; that study entailed learning to fly, and that entailed getting permission from their wives.

From Nature 3 December 1960

100 years ago

We geologists who were privileged to take part in the journey to Spitsbergen before the meeting of the Geological Congress in Stockholm had good reason to count ourselves fortunate ... Not many hours after sinking Bear Island in the southward ... we began to meet ice-floe; which soon thickened, so that we had to slow down and eventually to turn southward and westward for more open water. Again and again during the day was this experience repeated, a chilly ice-blink always paling the hazy sky to the north and east as we threaded our zigzag course amid the floes, on which inquisitive seals shifted uneasily, doubtful whether to regard us as dangerous or not ... Soon, very gently, the haze thinned away; the northern sun shimmered again over the smooth olive sea, burnishing the floes into silver; and then, gradually, an exquisite panorama of peaks and glaciers was unveiled in front of us ... and we knew that this was Spits-bergen, and worthy of its name.

From Nature 1 December 1910