New Zealand’s first dinosaur and India’s plague outbreak

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 21 September 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes.

We start our programme looking at the discovery of New Zealand’s first dinosaur by Joan Wiffen.

Our expert guest is Professor Eugenia Gold, a paleontologist at Suffolk University, in Boston, United States, and the author of children’s book She Found Fossils.

Then, we hear how the CT scanner was invented.

Following that, we go to India in 1994 and an outbreak of the pneumonic plague.

Plus, the story of how a small group of mountaineers risked their lives to camouflage landmarks in Leningrad during World War Two.

Finally, we hear from designer Ruth Kedar about how she came to create one of the most famous logos in history.

Contributors:

Chris Wiffen – son of late fossil-hunter Joan Wiffen.

Professor Eugenia Gold – paleontologist at Suffolk University, Boston, United States.

Robert Cormack – son of late CT scanner inventor, Allan Cormack.

Doctor Vibha Marfatia – who escaped the pneumonic plague.

Mikhail Bobrov – late mountaineer who helped save Leningrad’s landmarks.

Ruth Kedar - designer of the Google logo.

(Photo: Theropod dinosaur. Credit: Science Photo Library)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC World Service with me
0:08.9	Max Pearson the past brought to life by those who were there.
0:13.0	This week, a medical breakthrough which has helped save millions of lives,
0:17.0	the invention of the CT scanner.
0:20.0	Many of the radiologists didn't seem to grasp the point and I remember reporting back but
0:26.7	we would be lucky to make about 20 of these machines.
0:30.6	Plus how Leningrad's landmarks were camouflaged while under German siege in the Second World War.
0:37.0	The story behind Google's iconic logo and from 30 years ago an outbreak of plague that terrified India.
0:44.1	The thing I remember is waking up to banging on the law, don't drink the water,
0:50.1	and all the water is poisoned. That's all coming up later in the podcast.
0:55.0	But first, the story of a New Zealand woman who managed to turn the world of paleontology on its head in the 1970s.
1:02.0	Her name was Joan Wiffinf and along with her husband, son and
1:05.9	daughter the family were obsessive fossil hunters. They would venture deep into the largest
1:11.2	rainforest of New Zealand's North Island in the hope of finding something special.
1:15.0	Now at the time in the 1970s scientists believed dinosaurs had never inhabited New Zealand,
1:22.0	but Joan had spotted a reference in an old geology book to an area which included rocks from the Sorrian era.
1:29.0	This fired her up and she started to search for dinosaur remains.
1:34.0	With the help of archived recordings, Jones' son Chris Whippen has been telling Josephine McDermott
1:39.6	about his mother's extraordinary exploits and enthusiasm.
1:43.0	It was a bit like opening up the Christmas stocking.
1:47.0	The rocks under the bridge were coated with fossils,
1:50.0	all kinds of fossils, sharks teeth,
	...

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