Mike Wombwell

[Emma Mitchell 💙 @silverpebble]

There’s been a little rain here in East Anglia overnight. That earthy smell when rain hits parched ground that most people adore is called petrichor. One of its components is geosmin, a benign compound from soil bacteria that human noses can detect in lower concentrations than sharks can detect blood in water. Seeking out water on dry plains was essential for our ancestors, so you’re waking up a pretty cool ancient brain pathway when you’re sniffing that good niff. Here’s a geosmin molecule:

[Dr Rachel Clarke @doctor_oxford]

And these are the mass graves, in a forest outside Izium, where Russian forces dumped the bodies of the civilians they murdered.

445 bodies were retrieved by the Ukrainian troops who liberated Izium.

To witness this scene, in a European country in 2025, shook me to my core.

[A Cambridge Diary @acambridgediary]

A picture of Cambridge every day since 2010. (No 5000) Tuesday 5th December 2023.
So here it is - my final picture of uninterrupted daily photographs of Cambridge - 5,000 consecutive posts over 13 years. I’m sure you’ll forgive the fact that it wasn’t taken today but a week ago today when the full moon eased itself between the turrets of an illuminated King’s College Chapel. I knew the moment I pressed the shutter that I wanted it to be the last photograph of my daily pictures not just because this frame is undoubtedly the most recognisable view in Cambridge but because for me the full moon symbolises a moment of release and completion and a time to sit in the fullness of life and feel grateful for my blessings. The full moon is also associated with madness, of which I must have had a portion to have stuck with this for so long!
I’d like to thank you all for your likes, comments and stories along the way - you have made A Cambridge Diary a heartwarming community and a place to share memories with Cambridge folk both from the town and the university. Most of all I’d like to thank everyone who has appeared in my pictures over the past thirteen years: the bikers, bowlers and buskers; the carpenters, choristers, clothiers and constables; the dancers, diners and dog-walkers; the entertainers and extras; the gardeners and graduates; the kayakers; the lecturers and lingerie models; the painters, parents, pensioners, porters, praelectors, proctors, professors and punters; the readers, revellers, rowers and runners; the scaffolders, scullers, singers, skateboarders, soldiers, stonemasons, strollers, students and swimmers; the tourists and touts; the walkers and workers. I’d also like to thank the cats, dogs, ducks, rabbits, squirrels and swans, and Queen Elizabeth I and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. To you all, my sincere thanks.
Whilst this is my final daily picture it doesn’t mean the end of A Cambridge Diary as I’ll still be posting my pictures from five and ten years ago and I’m sure there will be the occasional new picture popping up now and then - just not every day. Oh, and I still have to walk home don’t I?
Love to all
Martin

[Historic Vids @historyinmemes]

Hand belonging to an X-ray technician at the Royal London Hospital, which shows the damage from radiation exposure, 1900.

Every morning, they would calibrate the machines by taking an X-ray of their hands. So you might be wondering, why not just use something else to test the X-ray? Like a piece of meat or a chicken leg? Well back in 1900, people didn't know the dangers of radiation exposure so they thought it would be harmless to use their hands. During this time, people could even purchase and build their own X-ray at home for entertainment purposes. Those who did, however, often went on to develop cancer or suffer from amputations.

The X-ray had been discovered just a few years before in 1895 by a man name Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, a German mechanical engineer and physicist. He named it X-ray because he actually didn't have a name for his invention and decided to use the mathematical designation "x" for something unknown. In some European countries, X-rays are actually called Röntgen rays.

Röntgen did not seek patents for his discoveries because he wanted society to benefit from the practical applications of X-rays. In 1901, Röntgen was awarded the first Nobel Prize in Physics.

[Bobbie @bo66ie29]

The single greatest shot filmed in television history. In 1978, James Burke had one chance to film this perfectly timed launch of Voyager 2. If he missed, there would have been no chance to re shoot it.

[Science girl @sciencegirl]

Both blocks are the same color. use your finger to cover the middle line.

An example of the Cornsweet illusion using shading and gradients to challenge perception, an optical illusion that was described in detail by Tom Cornsweet in the late 1960s

[Carl Bovis @CarlBovisNature]

Sadly, despite paying for Twitter Blue, people are still not seeing my tweets like they used to.😔
Can you please do me a favour? If you follow me and you see this tweet, can you please retweet it.🙏
To make it more worth sharing, here's a Kingfisher on a thorny branch. 🥰🐦

[Alexey Navalny @navalny]

19 years in a maximum security penal colony. The number of years does not matter. I perfectly understand that, like many political prisoners, I am sitting on a life sentence. Where life is measured by the term of my life or the term of life of this regime.

The sentencing figure is not for me. It is for you. You, not me, are being frightened and deprived of the will to resist. You are being forced to surrender your country of Russia without a fight to the gang of traitors, thieves, and scoundrels who have seized power. Putin must not achieve his goal. Do not lose the will to resist.

[BabelColour @StuartHumphryes]

Today is Waterloo Day! The 208th Anniversary of the battle which defeated Napoleon Bonaparte. To commemorate, I've cleaned-up a startling photograph of a British veteran of that campaign, displaying his Service Medal from the Napoleonic Wars 1793-1814. The photo was taken in 1850

[WW2 Airfields Archive @WW2Airfields]

When life imitates (nose) art.

B-29 Superfortress crew replicate the nose art which is a caricature of them in November 1944.

I believe the aircraft and crew was lost in action in 1945.

[Henry Wismayer @henrywismayer]

I'm doing homework about polar explorers with my son, who has just described the revelation that Peter Freuchen (pictured, left) dug his way out of an ice cave with a chisel made out of his own frozen turd as "the best fact I have ever heard in my life."

[A Cambridge Diary @acambridgediary]

1/3 A Fen Skater christened the ice today as conditions proved perfect for the first time in years.
Skating over the frozen flooded fields and meadows has been a part of Fenland life for hundreds of years.

[Michael Spicer @MrMichaelSpicer]

3 weeks in and she's lost the markets $500 billion. not saying that's grounds for dismissal or anything but i once nearly lost my job for buying a curry with a company card

[RhinoFive 🦏 @RhinoFive]

This. But live, unscripted and in response to things happening before his eyes that we could all also see.

RIP Eddie Butler

[Danny Baker @prodnose]

Still the greatest moment in TV documentary history.
https://t.co/HF3Lxu0WgU

[History Photographed @HistoryInPics]

Rejected Designs For The Eiffel Tower

[Myroslava Petsa @myroslavapetsa]

Victoria and her seven-year-old son Maksym had an appointment at medical centre in Vinnytsya when Russian missile hit it, destroying the building and killing Maksym and his mother. This is what Russia does when it says it hits military targets only. It targets everyone/everything