Read All About It

Britain's Royal Society's archive dates back to 1665, and includes papers from Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, and Isaac Newton. Its papers that are more than 70 years old are now freely available, reports Nature's News Blog. People can go and read those articles or sift through this list from the BBC of strange items such as the case of a woman who swallowed a bullet or a canine blood transfusion. At the Tree of Life, Jonathan Eisen lists microbe papers that might be of interest from the archive. "The release of these papers opens a fascinating window on the history of scientific progress over the last few centuries and will be of interest to anybody who wants to understand how science has evolved since the days of the Royal Society's foundation," says Uta Frith, the chair of the Royal Society library committee, in a statement.