Georgian Era
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Georgian Era’
William Herschel showed that variations in the brightness of the sun were causing climate change, but hardly anyone believed him.
In 1782, astronomer William Herschel set himself to examine a theory that the brightness of stars varied over time. There was no agreed classification for brightness, and no comprehensive record of observations, but it all had to do with a question that to Herschel was of the very first importance: whether the sun’s brightness also varies, and whether this has had any effect on earth’s climate.
The fort at Budge Budge near Calcutta proved stubborn against the massed artillery of the East India Company, but a tipsy seaman took it all by himself.
In 1756, colonial rivalry between France and Britain sparked the Seven Years’ War. In India, France’s ally Siraj ud-Daulah, Nawab of Bengal, drove the British from Calcutta; they in turn, smarting from the infamous ‘Black Hole’ incident, sailed gunships up to the Nawab’s fort at Budge Budge, which guarded the River Hooghly. The small hours of December 30th found them snatching a little sleep prior to a dawn assault.
Unlike some of his fellows in Westminster, Scottish statesman Henry Dundas made no attempt to make himself sound more ‘English’.
Henry Dundas (1742-1811) was one of Georgian Britain’s most influential Scottish statesmen, who served officially in William Pitt’s cabinet as Home Secretary, President of the Board of Control, Secretary of State for War, and First Lord of the Admiralty, but unofficially as ‘The Uncrowned King of Scotland’. Some fellow MPs from north of the Border tried to blend in with our English ways, but not Dundas.
Sir Edward and Lady Pellew were on their way to a dinner engagement one stormy day, when their carriage was caught up in tragedy at sea.
Edward Pellew (1757-1833), 1st Viscount Exmouth, served in the Royal Navy for fifty years, rising to the rank of Admiral and playing a leading role in the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. He is remembered for several acts of courage, such as the occasion when he rescued some five hundred passengers from a wreck off Plymouth Hoe during a violent storm.
Sir Isaac Newton told William Stukeley about the day when an apple fell from a tree and set him thinking about the solar system.
Most people know the story of Newton’s apple: how the great mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton, stumbled onto the principle of gravitation when he saw an apple fall from a tree. In his Memoirs of Newton’s Life (1752) William Stukeley not only confirmed the truth of the tale from Newton’s own lips, but also gave us a glimpse of the astonishing fertility of mind that followed.
Sir Isaac’s secretary has left us an engaging portrait of a kindly genius, the absent-minded professor of our fancy.
In 1685, Sir Isaac Newton engaged a secretary to help him with his increasing workload, a Mr Humphrey Newton who was, it seems, no relation of the great mathematician. Many years later John Conduitt, Newton’s successor as Master of the Mint and also the great man’s nephew by marriage, asked Humphrey to supply him with his recollections of Sir Isaac.