On this day in 1695 the company which undertook the Darien Scheme was formed.

The company came to ruin five years later through English obstruction, Spanish hostility and Scottish mismanagement. The image is of Darien House in Bristo Street in Edinburgh. Originally built as the headquarters for the ill-fated Company, it later became a lunatic asylum for paupers in the nearby workhouse.

26 June 1824 saw the birth of William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, eminent Scottish physicist. He devised the Kelvin, or Absolute, scale of temperature. Thomson brought together disparate areas of physics - heat, thermodynamics, mechanics, hydrodynamics, magnetism, and electricity - and thus played a principal role in the final synthesis of 19th-century science.

His success as a synthesizer of theories about energy places him in the same position in 19th-century physics as Sir Isaac Newton has in 17th-century physics or Albert Einstein in 20th-century physics.

Today's recipe: this cherry tomato and spinach bread is a quick and easy comforting treat.