The city of London sought in the heat of summer, 1858. But it was not merely the sun that scorched the metropolis. An even more repellent force infested its very heart: the River Thames. Years of industrial waste had transformed London's lifeblood into a foul-smelling mire. The stench was overwhelming, a miasma that clung to every cobblestone and s

The Rosetta Stone, a monumental artifact unveiled in 1799, has served as a key to understanding the cryptic hieroglyphs of ancient Egyptian civilization. This remarkable slab, inscribed with the same decree in three different scripts—hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek—provided the crucial link necessary for deciphering the long-lost language of t