The meteorologist who said continents move was mocked for half a century.
Alfred Wegener proposed continental drift in 1912, but was vindicated only in the 1960s with plate tectonics, three decades after he died in Greenland.
More amazing facts
- 1910 In 1910 people bought 'comet pills'. Astronomers had found poisonous cyanogen in Halley's Comet's tail, which Earth was due to pass through, and hucksters sold pills and gas masks.
- 1911 · 1912 · 1916 Stewardess Violet Jessop was aboard all three sister liners in their hour of disaster: Olympic's collision in 1911, Titanic's sinking in 1912 and Britannic's in 1916.
- 1911 · 1912 People reached the South Pole before the Titanic sank.
- 1912 · 1948 From 1912 to 1948 Olympic medals were awarded for poems, music and paintings.
- 1913 · 1915 Americans once mailed their children.
- 1914 Passenger pigeons once numbered in the billions, but the last one, Martha, died on 1 September 1914 — a month after World War I began.