Early Rockets (1903-12-17)NASA
Some pieces of history are so momentous, so era-defining, that they seem timeless and placeless. But, from the Wright Brothers' flight to the first nuclear explosion, these earth-shattering moments happened somewhere.
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Isaac Newton and the apple tree
In 1666, Isaac Newton left plague-ridden Cambridge to live at his parents' house, Woolsthorpe Manor. Here, he performed some of his most important experiments on light and optics. Tradition holds that it was this orchard that he was sat in when he thought of gravity.
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Kitty Hawk, US
You wouldn't imagine that anything could be invented in this flat expanse of sand. But Kitty Hawk is the beach where Wilbur and Orville Wright's plane, Flyer I, made its maiden flight. It flew for only 12 seconds, but it ushered in the era of heavier-than-air, powered aircraft.
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Musée Curie, France
The Musée Curie was formerly Marie Curie's laboratory where, from 1914–1934, she performed research into radioactivity and its uses in healthcare and radiography. The museum was established in 1934, after Curie's untimely death.
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Radcliffe College, USA
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin isn't a name known to many, and yet as a PhD student she discovered the most abundant element in the universe. Or, rather, she proved, against all existing assumptions, that suns are composed of hydrogen, not solid rock.
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Trinity Site, New Mexico, USA
This monument in the Jornada del Muerto desert, New Mexico, marks the epicentre of the first nuclear explosion. On July 16, 1945, a test bomb known simply as 'The Gadget' detonated with the force of 22,000 tons of TNT. One month later, a similar bomb would be dropped on Japan.
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CERN, Switzerland
The ATLAS detector of the Large Hadron Collider has become a symbol of discovery for our own age. But CERN is home to more than Higgs-Bosons. In 1991, it hosted the very first World Wide Web server. In 1993, the Web was made accessible to everyone on the planet, at no cost.
Study of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters by Jim Kay, for The Philosopher’s StoneThe British Library
Still in the mood for location, location, location? Turn from the Higgs-Boson to Harry Potter and discover 10 Places That Inspired Your Favorite Books
