Skip navigation

The NaturePlus Forums will be offline from mid August 2018. The content has been saved and it will always be possible to see and refer to archived posts, but not to post new items. This decision has been made in light of technical problems with the forum, which cannot be fixed or upgraded.

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has contributed to the very great success of the forums and to the community spirit there. We plan to create new community features and services in the future so please watch this space for developments in this area. In the meantime if you have any questions then please email:

Fossil enquiries: esid@nhm.ac.uk
Life Sciences & Mineralogy enquiries: bug@nhm.ac.uk
Commercial enquiries: ias1@nhm.ac.uk

Currently Being Moderated

Today, 16 April, we celebrated the 350th anniversary of the birth of Sir Hans Sloane, and the start of our Sloane 350 season.

hans-portrait.jpg

 

You can find out all about this great 18th century naturalist and physician, who brought chocolate to the UK, on our Sloane 350 website.

 

Sir Hans Sloane collected over 400,000 objects in his long lifetime including plants, animals, manuscripts and all manner of antiquities. We have many of his specimens in the Museum and he is effectively the founding father of this Museum.

 

When Sloane first tasted the chocolate drink in Jamaica, where he worked as a young physician early in his career, he described it as 'nauseous'. But the story goes that after trying it mixed with milk, and not water as it was drunk by the Jamaicans then, he found it much more appealing and 'healthy'. He brought his recipe back to London and later, Cadbury's started making chocolate (pictured below) as we know it from his original recipe. The rest is history.


One of our celebrity specimens in the Museum is the cocoa Sir Hans Sloane actually collected.

chocolate-wrap.jpg

 

jamaican-moth.jpgYou can explore some of Sloane's amazing collections on the Sloane Herbarium tours. Have a look at our Sloane 350 events web page for details.

 

Today we also featured one of the most beautiful moths in the world, Urania sloanus, as our Species of the Day.This gorgeous Jamaican creature (right), now extinct sadly, was named in honour of Sir Hans Sloane. He was probably responsible for the first illustration of the moth. Find out more on our Urania sloanus Species of the Day page.

 

And we ate some fair trade chocolate in the office to celebrate...

Comments (0)