The second and last of our trips in 2010, organised by Thatcham Historical Society, took place on the 11th September. The trip saw members of the society, and guests from other societies including the U3A, and friends and family, visit the Natural History Museum. Most of us spent the day in the Natural History Museum, others also visited the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
A wide variety of items were seen, with some of the younger guests the Dinosaurs being the highlight whilst others enjoyed the geology section, a few took part in activities in the Darwin Centre and others were fascinated by the mammal section showing the evolution of various animals.
We tend to think of history as a few thousand years, may be a few tens of thousands, many forget that the history of our Earth stretches back some 4.5 billion years. This was shown in the museum by a fascinating exhibit on the creation and formation of the Earth within which were shown meteorites dating to around 4 billion years. Other exhibits show the scale of some extinct animals. Being stood against these animals, Dinosaurs and Plesiosaurs, that walked (or swam) the Earth over 100 million years ago and being dwarfed by them is a humbling and amazing experience.
All of the exhibits form part of our history and although we may not like it, some of the exhibits showed our more disturbing historical events. Within the museum there were several examples of this, perhaps the two most notable was the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, which showed the effect on human life and the environment, and then whaling. The latter made even more real by startling facts such as the extinction, or near extinction of some species, and a life sized model of a Blue Whale.
Everyone who went on the trip left wanting to go back for more. The museum itself is incredible and just goes to show there is much more to history than people first think.