Professor Joe Cain publishes blog posts on many subjects related to his research interests.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited Crystal Palace Dinosaurs several times during the site’s construction in 1853 and 1854. In November 1853, the Royals visited the Model-Room, or Studio, of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and observed More…
When I was researching the start of the London and Birmingham Railway and John Cooke Bourne’s painting of Euston Arch, I happened to visit Ely Cathedral with my good friend, Professor Michael Ruse. In the More…
In August 1852, The Illustrated London News published a first look at the new Crystal Palace attraction at Sydenham. This included a design vision for the revised glasshouse and the pleasure gardens in which that More…
No-one was surprised when Punch magazine celebrated the grand opening of the Crystal Palace in Sydenham, with opening ceremonies on 10 June 1854. Illustrated London News, its competitor on the weekly magazine market, did the More…
The cartoon depicting a man dreaming of monsters is one of two famous illustrations from Punch magazine referencing Crystal Palace Dinosaurs. In a previous post, I presented the other 1855 cartoon, “A visit to the antediluvian More…
Punch, or The London Charivari, was a British weekly magazine famous for its illustrated commentary and satire of politics and culture across the nineteen century and twentieth century. Mr Punch became a cultural icon: part More…
There’s a mystery animal outside St Paul’s Cathedral in central London. What is it? The best, first historical source describes it as an alligator. Seriously? To locate it, visit St Paul’s Cathedral churchyard. Move to More…
Dr Jean-Baptiste Gouyon and I started the STSNewsRoom in 2021 to bring together different summer activities underway in UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS). We wanted to expand student contributions to the department’s More…
Great news: John van Laun’s MPhil 2021 study of John Cooke Bourne’s tinted lithographs of the London and Birmingham Railway is available via UCL Discovery as open access. I hear from John there is an aside More…
George Gaylord Simpson was the undisputed American heavy-weight in macro-evolutionary theory prior to paleobiology’s disciplinary formation in the 1970s. Memory of Simpson’s intellectual influence on this next generation of thinkers is tied intimately to aggressive More…
Copyright 2023 Professor Joe Cain
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