Flea in my ear

Our Special Collections display cabinet at the University is currently displaying a selection of amazing artefacts.

This is the original drawing by Robert Hooke in his Micrographia of 1665 (a first edition, no less) of a flea under magnification. His Micrographia became the first scientific 'bestseller' and was a landmark publication of life under early microscopic examination.

The beautiful thing about Special Collections is you can touch this stuff! And much more besides - one of the earliest printed books (Chaucer), a Koran from the 8th century, Noel Coward's musical scripts, a first edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover, and of course, all the less notorious stuff too.