Born in 1799, Mary Anning — the dirt-poor woman said to have inspired the tongue-twister “She sells seashells by the seashore” — would spend her entire life uncovering and piecing together the fossils of one never-before-seen monster after another: organisms that had been hidden away for nearly 200 million years in the cliffs up and down England’s southern coastline.

In short, she provided raw material to the scientists — all male — that would be instrumental in forming their evolutionary theories. Stephen Jay Gould later remarked that Anning is “probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology” yet Anning’s place in history happened quite by accident.

By birth, Anning never should have become an influential fossil hunter and geologist. She was marginalized not only by her family’s poverty but also by her sex, her regional dialect, and her nearly complete lack of schooling. But she enjoyed one natural advantage: the very good fortune of having been born in exactly the right place at the right time, alongside some of the most geologically unstable coastline in the world; it was — and still is — a place permeated with fossils.

After her father died in 1810, young Mary’s family was in dire financial straits. In order to put food on her table, she was forced to run the shore’s gauntlet of high tides and landslides to hunt for curiosities that she could sell to seafaring tourists. If she hadn’t, her family very well could have starved.

Her first discovery, made in 1811 when she was only 12 years old, was of the fossil of an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile about four feet in length with flippers like a dolphin and a chest like a lizard. At first people thought it must be a crocodile. In time, though, the specimen attracted massive crowds to museums in London, where many soon realized the skeleton was of a creature never before seen.

The strange fossils found along England’s southern shoreline had baffled the locals for as long as anyone could remember. They came in all forms and sizes — including what later were determined to be bivalves, ammonites, belemnites, and brachiopods — and sometimes even the fragments of giant critters never heard of before.

Her discovery of a nearly intact long-necked plesiosaur (Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus) in 1823 was so incredible that even the celebrated French anatomist Georges Cuvier did not believe it could be valid. It was only after British geologist William Conybeare defended Anning’s find — and verified that the neck did indeed boast at least 35 vertebrae — did Cuvier admit he was wrong. Eventually he pronounced Anning’s fossil a major discovery.

As Anning aged, and began working alongside Britain’s clique of male geologists — most of them Anglican clergymen — there were countless attempts to use biblical stories to explain the new knowledge about the natural world that resulted from her fossil discoveries. For example, Anning’s friend and associate William Buckland — the well-known English geologist and first professor of geology at Oxford — believed that the fossils found at high altitudes proved that a great flood had once covered the planet, just like the Flood described in the Bible.

Anning’s views on the flood and the disparate theories of the male scientists of her era are not known. But in 1833, she was visited by a tourist, the Reverend Henry Rawlins, and his six–year-old son, Frank. Rawlins believed that God created the world within a week, but Anning described to young Frank how the fossils purchased by his father had been found by her at all different levels in the cliffs, explaining that this meant the creatures possibly had been created and had lived at different times. According to Frank’s journals, his father refused to discuss the issue after they left Anning’s home.

One can only imagine how frightening it must have been for Anning to find the fragments of these exotic creatures — with their bat-like wings, snake-like necks, and big, bulging eye sockets — and wonder if perhaps the live versions were not about to fly out of the sky or come up out of the sea to terrorize her.

Anning tried to reconcile what she was unearthing with her belief in God’s omnipotence, a belief she apparently held until her death from breast cancer at the age of 47. Some of her letters to friends suggest that she grew to accept that there had been a progression of living things. A few years before she died, she remarked that — from what she had seen of the fossil world — there is a “connection of analogy between the Creatures of the former and present World.” From most accounts, it seems she continued to believe in God throughout her life, but that she also came to accept that evolution was part of God’s plan. Toward the end of her life, she copied into her journals many poems and passages laced with religious overtones.

At the Natural History Museum in London, as well as a small museum in Lyme Regis, Anning is recognized as having laid the groundwork for the theory of evolution, not to mention nearly two centuries of discoveries in the still evolving worlds of paleontology and geology. Today thousands of people continue to go hunting for fossils along England’s so-called Jurassic coast — a 95-mile stretch of shoreline declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2001. And, to this day, real and startling discoveries are still being made, such as the skeleton of a 195-million–year-old Scelidosaurus, the earliest of the armored dinosaurs, in Anning’s hometown of Lyme Regis a few years ago.

With over 700 species of dinosaurs already identified and named, reminders of the prehistoric past just keep on surfacing, thrilling paleontologists. But there are plenty of people who are still unsettled by the signs of the completely different world that must have existed on earth before humans arrived — even if they also are able to marvel at the possibilities. It is most likely a feeling that — nearly two centuries ago — Anning would have shared.

Written by: Shelley Emling

Shall we harken back to 1879, the year of Edison’s light bulb patent? He liked to demonstrate the magic of his new creation and entice investors with it every chance that he got. His bulbs always garnered widespread excitement with plenty of “Oohs” and “Ahhs.” That Christmas was no different, when he decorated his Menlo Park lab with his new lights, bringing spectators from near and far to see the winter magic. Inside or out, nothing adds more of a magical accent to the Holidays than bright, colorful and soothing lights.

Before electric Christmas lights, families would use candles to light up their Christmas trees. This practice was often dangerous and led to many home fires. Edward H. Johnson put the very first string of electric Christmas tree lights together in 1882. Johnson, Edison’s friend and partner in the Edison’s Illumination Company, hand-wired 80 red, white and blue light bulbs and wound them around his Christmas tree. Not only was the tree illuminated with electricity, it also revolved on a base!

Christmas lights were not mass-produced until 1902, when General Electric, a company founded by Edison in the 1880’s, brought the holiday lights to select consumers. The lights were quite expensive and not available to the mass market until a few decades later. Advertisements that boasted a safer and odorless way to decorate for the holidays stimulated sales for the lights.

To this day, a large Christmas tree shines bright in the Thomas Edison’s Glenmont mansion in New Jersey every Holiday Season, which is now decorated by park rangers.

Mrs. Edison’s touch was everywhere during the Holidays, with her special Christmas trees set up in the conservatory for her house workers to enjoy. A favorite was the Swedish candle box tree. Many decorations were lovingly placed around the house…and of course a formal printed menu for the big dinner she held every year for family and friends, usually totaling 30 people! That and her husband’s Christmas lights made it all the more memorable.

Though the Apollo lunar modules were built for the sole purpose of landing two men on the surface of the Moon, their usefulness didn’t end after ascending from the lunar surface. While on the moon, the astronauts placed seismic censors and NASA used the spent spacecraft for science, directing these modules for controlled crashed into the Moon. These crashes caused moonquakes, and scientists measured the vibrations moving through the Moon and found it rings like a bell.

The real goal of the seismic experiments was to figure out the Moon’s internal structure. Measuring how long the reverberations last, how powerful they are, and how big the waves get can reveal what the Moon is made of. Remote seismic stations were instrumental in this investigation, and they were deployed as part of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Packages that astronauts set up on the Moon on Apollos 12, 14, 15, and 16; different versions were deployed on Apollos 11 and 17.

From when they were first set up to when they were remotely shut down in 1977, these ALSEPs recorded all kinds of seismic activity. The data was sent back to receiving stations on Earth where the signal was magnified by 10 million so scientists could interpret the signal.

But something interesting happened on Apollo 12. After Pete Conrad and Al Bean landed at the Ocean of Storms on November 14, 1969, they left the lunar surface 142 hours into the flight. Eight hours later, they were reunited with Dick Gordon in the command module and sent their spent lunar module back to the Moon. It impacted about 40 miles away from the Apollo 12 landing site with the force of one ton of TNT. The resulting shockwave built up and peaked in just eight minutes. Then it took an hour to fully dissipate.

Something similar happened on Apollo 13. The S-IVB impacted the Moon 85 miles from Apollo 12’s ALSEP — CMP Jack Swigert joked at the time that it was the only thing on that mission to go right. It hit with the force of 11 and a half tons of TNT. This translated to a seismic impact peaked after seven minute with shockwaves 30 times greater and four times longer than those from Apollo 12’s LM impact.

The vibrations from these two impacts lasted longer than scientists expected, far longer than any equivalent vibrations last on Earth. It was almost as if the Moon was ringing like a bell. This strange result forced scientists to think differently about the Moon and its composition.

It turns out that these impacts were characteristic of one of four types of moonquakes scientists studied from ALSEP data. Some moonquakes originate deep below the surface because of lunar tides, some are thermal quakes caused by the Sun thawing the frozen surface at the start of a new lunar day, and others are caused by impacting meteors. The fourth kind of moonquake is a shallow moonquake occurring roughly a couple of tens of miles below the surface. The lunar module and S-IVB both produced this kind of vibration, and these are the most violent types of moonquakes.

Between 1972 and 1977, scientists recorded 28 shallow moonquakes registering as high as 5.5 on the Richter scale. On Earth, that will move heavy furniture and crack plaster, but the vibrations usually die down in a matter of minutes.

It all comes down to water. There’s moisture in the materials that makes up our planet, expanding their structure. As energy from an earthquake moves through our planet, that damp material acts like a sponge, absorbing the energy of the waves and ultimately deadening their effects. But the Moon is dry, cool, and rigid, more like a solid rock than a sponge. So even if a moonquake is less intense, there’s nothing to deaden the vibrations. They just go back and forth through the body until the solid stone eventually stops them. The “ringing bell” is the shock waves reverberating through that stone.

Would-be mail thieves didn’t stand a chance against Stagecoach Mary. The hard-drinking, quick-shooting mail carrier sported two guns and men’s clothing. Bandits beware: In 1890s Montana, would-be mail thieves didn’t stand a chance against Stagecoach Mary.

As the first African American woman to carry mail, she stood out on the trail—and became a Wild West legend. Rumor had it that she’d fended off an angry pack of wolves with her rifle, had “the temperament of a grizzly bear,” and was not above a gunfight. But how much of Stagecoach Mary’s story is myth?

Born Mary Fields in around 1832, Fields was born into slavery, and like many other enslaved people, her exact date of birth is not known. Even the place of her birth is questionable, though historians have pinpointed Hickman County, Tennessee as the most likely location. At the time, enslaved people were treated like pieces of a property; their numbers were recorded in record books, their names were not.

Her story becomes clearer after the end of the Civil War, when she was freed. Many formerly enslaved people headed north to friendlier territory. So did Fields, who seems to have gone up the Mississippi River working on riverboats and acting as a servant and laundress for families along the way. She ended up in Ohio, living a life that was well outside the norm—in a convent.

It’s not clear how Fields discovered the Ursuline Convent of the Sacred Heart in Toledo, Ohio. Some accounts say she accompanied a daughter of the Warner family to the convent. Others say she headed there with a family friend who was a nun.

The religious community, which still exists today, was serene and disciplined. There, Fields worked as a groundskeeper. Her gruff style and penchant for cursing raised eyebrows in the quiet convent. When asked how her journey to Toledo was, she reportedly told one of the nuns that she was ready for “a good cigar and a drink.” Historical records show that the nuns complained about her volatile temper and her “difficult” nature.

According to historian Dee Garceau-Hagen, one nun remembered Fields’ wrath when anyone disturbed her lovingly kept grounds, saying “God help anyone who walked on the lawn after Mary had cut it.” Fields also tussled with the nuns over her wages—behavior that would have shocked white women who expected African Americans to be well behaved and subservient.

Though Fields struggled to adjust to the sheltered life of the convent, she did make a friend: Mother Amadeus Dunne, the convent’s Mother Superior. Known for her fearlessness and charisma, Dunne was called to missionary work by her bishop and headed to Montana where she founded an Ursuline convent there in 1884. There, she assisted Jesuit priests who were starting schools for the Blackfeet Nation. In 1885, Fields got word that the beloved nun was gravely ill, and headed to Montana to help her.

The West suited Fields, who nursed Dunne back to health and began working for her new convent near Cascade, Montana. But though she faithfully served the nuns in the harsh, sparsely populated community, news of her subversive behavior reached the bishop, who raised serious concerns about Fields’ habits of drinking, smoking, shooting guns and wearing men’s clothing. When Fields and the convent’s male janitor pointed guns at one another during an argument, it was the final straw.

Kicked out of the convent, Fields was on her own—and she set about living a life that was shocking by 19th-century standards. She took in laundry and did odd jobs, started businesses and became known for liking hard liquor and gunfights.

This tough reputation ended up paying off. In 1895, she got a contract from the postal service to become a star route carrier—an independent contractor who carried mail using a stagecoach donated by Mother Amadeus. It suited Fields to a tee. As a star carrier, her job was to protect the mail on her route from thieves and bandits and to deliver mail. She was only the second woman in the United States (and the first African American woman) to serve in that role.

“Stagecoach Mary” or “Black Mary,” as she was nicknamed, carried a rifle and a revolver. She met trains with mail, then drove her stagecoach over rocky, rough roads and through snow and inclement weather. And though she intimidated would-be thieves with her height and her tough demeanor, she became beloved by locals, who praised her generosity and her kindness to children.

For eight years, Fields protected and delivered the mail. Eventually age caught up to her and she retired. The community rallied to support her, despite occasional dust-ups with neighbors. Local restaurateurs gave her free meals; saloon regulars chatted with her until bars became forbidden to woman due to a town ordinance. When she died on December 5, 1914, her funeral was one of the largest the town had ever seen.

Because of scant records and the temptation to create Wild West legends out of ordinary people, many facts about Field’s life are still fuzzy. What is clear is that her real-life persona was extraordinary enough to draw plenty of attention on its own. Mary Fields didn’t need to be a myth to stand out from the crowd—but she didn’t seem to mind her outsized reputation.