December 30

Have you made your plans for New Year’s Eve yet? If not, consider the following. Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins was a 19th century English sculptor who became friends with paleontologist Sir Richard Owen (pictured). There is nothing terribly startling or interesting in that is there? It was bound to have happened because they were both British, ran in the same circles, met and hit it off. The men met when they both became involved with London’s Great Exhibition of 1851. Combining their two talents, the pair built a life-size model of an Iguanodon, a fierce ornithopod dinosaur, for the Exhibition. On the 30th in 1853, the two hosted a dinner party for twenty inside the Iguanodon. While not quite New Year’s Eve, it’s close enough and it did seem like a particularly good way to ring in the New Year. While it wasn’t Capote’s black and white ball it still must have been very cool.