50 Years Ago

Nowadays, most scientists who reach a fair degree of seniority in their profession are called on at some time ... to plan a new laboratory. On the first occasion, they usually tackle this with enthusiasm, pride and little else, other than their own prejudices or knowledge of the deficiencies of the laboratories they have themselves worked in.

From Nature 29 June 1963

100 Years Ago

A shameful outrage has just been perpetrated at the Gatty Marine Laboratory of St. Andrews ... The laboratory has always been freely open to scientific workers of both sexes ... and might therefore have been expected to be immune from attack; yet it has been fired, apparently by militant suffragettes ... It appears that on Saturday, June 21, the incendiaries effected an entry by smashing one of the windows ... The print of a small shoe, and suffragette literature stuck between the wall and a rain-pipe, were the only traces left. Fortunately the fire was seen by a fisherman, who gave the alarm.

ALSO:

Yorkshire Education Committee has decided to include in the vacation ... a laboratory course of experimental science ... This course is intended for science teachers in secondary schools, and especially for those who teach the subject to girls and desire to acquaint themselves with methods of correlating it with domestic subjects. It will relate chiefly to the subject of combustion ... provide examples of the teaching of science in relationship to the phenomena and appliances of daily life and especially of domestic life; and give a connected account of the modern science of combustion and the chemistry of flame.

From Nature 26 June 1913