The city of London sweltered in the heat of summer, 1858. But it was not merely the sun that parched the metropolis. An even more unpleasant 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 oppressive, a miasma that clung to every cobblestone and

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 required for deciphering the long-lost language of th