The oldest fossilized imprint of the rose was left on a slate deposit found in Florissant, Colorado. It is estimated to be 35 million years old.

It was by the molecular clock method that the branching point between chimpanzee and man was shown to be as recent as 5-8 million years ago, rather than 14-16 million years, as had been previously generally accepted.

The ancient library at Alexandria at the time of Alexander the Great (around 320BC) was called 'the temple of the muses'. It contained about 400,000 books and it is from this that we get the modern word 'museum'.