11 bizarre forgotten 'discoveries' made
A treatment for electric pandora murano glass beads on sale shocks, the location of Atlantis, a photograph of ball lightning and canals on the surface of Mars.
No, these aren't recent 21st Century findings; they're some of the bizarre 'scientific discoveries' made by Victorians more than one hundred years ago.
A genealogist from West Yorkshire found hidden Victorian 'discoveries'. Caroline Rochford unearthed the theories in old magazines from 1875 to 1895. They include a man teaching a dog to 'read'. Another article examines an attempt to train zebras as horses, as shown in this illustration from one of the magazines
The amazing findings were made by Caroline Rochford, 31, from Wakefield, West Yorkshire and are detailed in her book 'Great Victorian Discoveries: Astounding Revelations and Misguided Assumptions'.
The professional genealogist, who runs the companyHeir Line pandora jewelry charms with her husband, found the stories when she inherited a collection of old Victorian magazines in 2011 from an elderly relative.
She told MailOnline her book reveals 'hundreds of the greatest, wackiest and little known discoveries that were made by scientists and explorers at the end of the 19th Century.'
THE ELECTRIC PLANT
One of the supposed scientific discoveries, in 1885, involved an 'electric plant' found in Hindustan.
Dubbed phytolacca electrica, it supposedly generated a strong current of electricity that flowed all the way through it when in full bloom.
'When the stem or a twig was snapped by hand, an intense electric shock was felt, causing even the strongest man to stagger backwards,' explained Mrs Rochford.
GREAT VICTORIAN INVENTIONS Caroline Rochford's previous book dealt with similarly bizarre Victorian inventions.
They included spectacles for horses, and a steam powered man that could pull cars full of people.
Another was a bicycle railway, where people pedalled on an inverted bike that rode along a single track on top of a wooden fence.
And for house fires, someone devised the 'hand grenade fire extinguisher' that could be thrown into a blaze.
'Its discovery was quite widely reported at the time with newspapers around the world printing the story but sadly there seem to be few modern accounts of it.
'Perhaps it was so rare that other examples have never been found.
'But that's one of the things I found so charming about the articles they offered a glimpse into a forgotten world.'
THE FIRST PICTURE OF BALL LIGHTNING
Another article discussed a phenomenon that we know of today ball lightning and is apparently the earliest known photograph of the effect.
'The photograph was taken by Mr Dunn, an ironmonger's son, who witnessed this unusual thunderstorm from the window of his house in Newcastle on 17th July 1891,' said Mrs Rochford.
'The storm was raging over the River Tyne, and suddenly the ball lightning whizzed across the river, before vanishing into thin air.'
This is reportedly the first ever picture of ball lightning, taken by an ironmonger's son in 1891.'The storm was raging over the River Tyne, and suddenly the ball lightning whizzed across the river, before vanishing into thin air,' explained Mrs Rochford
CANALS ON MARS
'In about 1893 an Italian astronomer pandora necklaces jewelry called Giovanni Schiaparelli was convinced he'd discovered artificial canals on Mars, having observed the planet through his telescope,' explained Mrs Rochford.
'He was sure that Martian inhabitants were constructing parallel waterways for the coming and going of their extraterrestrial vessels.
'So convinced were the Victorians that there pandora murano glass beads on sale was life on Mars that they began planning to send signals to our nearest neighbours in the form of Morse signals, flashed by either giant mirrors or enormous electric lights.
'One French lady apparently bequeathed a considerable sum of money to the cause, but sadly, by the end of the year, Mars Pandora Charms had begun travelling away from Earth, so the Victorians' chance of saluting the dwellers of another planet and perhaps even receiving a reply never came about.'
'In about 1893 an Italian astronomer called Giovanni Schiaparelli was convinced he'd discovered artificial canals on Mars, having observed the planet through his telescope,' explained Mrs Rochford. Some of the sketches he made (not in the book) are shown here