In the mid-twentieth century, geneticist Lionel Penrose observed correlations between genetic abnormalities and the creases of the hand, publishing his final paper ‘Fingerprints and palmistry’ in The Lancet in 1973. The hand has long intrigued physicians, embryologists, endocrinologists, psychiatrists and physical anthropologists, notes historian Alison Bashford.

In November 2008, at the height of the global financial crisis, Queen Elizabeth visited the London School of Economics. In the course of this visit she asked the assembled economists why they had not seen the financial crisis coming. Not having any immediate answers, the economists consulted and ran seminars.

“Climate defies easy definition,” writes historian Melissa Charenko in her complex yet accessible book on the scientific study of the climate during the twentieth century. This research relied on climate proxies, which fall into two types. Physical proxies include fossilized pollen, tree rings and stalagmites.

One of the many vivid details in geographer Jamie Woodward’s brief history of Earth is palaeontologist Stephen Gould’s demonstration of the planet’s 4.5-billion-year lifespan during his lectures. Using his outstretched arm, Gould’s shoulder marks Earth’s formation, life appears at the elbow and the last millimetre of his middle fingernail represents the history of humans.

The sight of two young male friends walking across Cornwall in the summer of 1850 with knapsacks on their backs caused consternation among the locals.

‘Poor fellows!’ they said. ‘Obliged to carry all your baggage on your own backs!’ In villages, little children ran indoors to bring out their siblings.

In 1964, two physicists working at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey were puzzling over the persistent static that plagued the signals picked up by a massive receiver built to detect radio waves bouncing off satellites.

Nobody likes a convert. For believers, the word carries connotations of zealotry, an implicit accusation of slackness in those with established beliefs. To the unconverted, it represents a baffling abandonment, a loss of plot and implied disapproval of unconverted friends.

Constructed to be a statement of French military strength, the Maginot Line has come to be seen instead as solid evidence of a defensive, doomed-to-defeat attitude, duly exploited by the Blitzkrieg in the summer of 1940.

Preaching​ before Edward VI and his council in June 1548, Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, reflected that ‘in my time hath come many alterations.’ Gardiner was referring to the break with Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries and the iconoclastic fervour of Edward’s reign, each of which represented a ‘great alteration’ of policy and sentiment.

In his 2002 memoir Interesting Times, the British historian Eric Hobsbawm offers a succinct definition of the 1900s. “Nothing is more characteristic of that century,” he notes, “than what my friend Antonio Polito calls ‘one of the great demons of the 20th century: political passion’.”