Images Dated 22nd July 2003

Sailing-Tall Ships-Poland-Sedov

The Mexican ship First ship Cuauhtemoc (L) participates, 22 July 2003 in Gdansk Bay in Gdynia, northern Poland, in the Grand Parade of Tall Ships. The three-day parade is the biggest mass entertainment on the Polish coast in 2003. The Cutty Sark Tall Ships Race took place in Poland for the fourth time. The promoters expected the participation of ten to twenty greatest and most beautiful sailing-ships from all over the world and several hundred yachts with several thousand sailors. All the units were moored in the Gdynia Port. AFP PHOTO MACIEJ KOSYCARZ / AFP PHOTO / MACIEJ KOSYCARZ

© Agence France-Presse (AFP) - All Rights Reserved

Earliest recording of a European meteorite

Earliest recorded European meteorite. Medieval manuscript page which is the first to record a meteorite (shown in woodcut image at top). It fell near Ensisheim, a town in Alsace which is now in France, on the morning of 7 November 1492. The "thunderstone" was interpreted as a sign of God's anger. It is thought that the meteorite weighed almost 130 kilogrammes (kg), of which a 55 kg mass remains. The meteorite was a stony chondrite type; chondrites make up about 86% of the solar system's meteorites. About 500 meteorites hit Earth each year, but most fall in the sea or remote regions & go unrecorded. Meteorites were not widely accepted as having an extraterrestrial origin until 1803

© D. VAN RAVENSWAAY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Thalidomide drug molecule

Thalidomide (C13.H10.N2.O4) molecular model. The atoms are colour-coded: carbon (yellow), hydrogen (white), nitrogen (blue) and oxygen (red). This is R-thalidomide, a mirror image (enantiomer) of S- thalidomide, both of which share the same structural formula. Thalidomide was developed as a sedative drug to aid sleep in pregnant woman. It was found to cause foetal abnormalities (stunted limbs, or phocomelia), and was withdrawn in 1961. Further research discovered that only the "S" form caused deformities. A purified drug containing only the "R" enantiomer is now being used to treat leprosy and as an anti-cancer drug. See A624/155 for an image of S-thalidomide

© DR TIM EVANS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY