ATLAS / WORLD HISTORY IN PICTURES

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Find your way through history.

Explore 228 entries across places and centuries. Follow an event, compare its context, and examine the evidence.

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1858–1875 CENew study
The historic Prince Consort beam engine at Crossness Pumping Station, photographed in 2007. This modern photograph documents surviving sanitation machinery; it is not an 1865 photograph. Steve Cadman / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Resized and converted to WebP; derivative under the same licence · Licence terms

Europe / Medicine

London’s sanitation: waste, water and public works

Rapid urban growth overwhelmed older waste systems. London’s sewer works show how public health depended on engineering, finance and the work of maintenance.

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