24 April, 1990 – The Hubble Space Telescope is launched into Earth orbit

Unhindered by the impurities and distortions of Earth's atmosphere, the 2.4 meter aperture telescope has delivered some of the most spectacular images of the far reaches of the Universe.

25 April, 1953 – The double helix structure of DNA described for the first time

Francis Crick and James D. Watson published their ground-breaking findings about the molecule containing genetic information was in Nature that day.

26 April, 1925 – Franz Kafka publishes his landmark novel The Trial

The text, which was initially published as Der Process, is a nightmarish account of a man being arrested and prosecuted by a faceless authority for an unknown crime.

27 April, 1810 – Ludwig van Beethoven composes Für Elise

Bagatelle No. 25 for solo piano is one of the German composer's most popular works and one of the most recognised melodies in the history of music.

28 April, 1947 – Thor Heyerdahl begins his legendary journey on Kon-Tiki

The Norwegian explorer and his crew set out on the 101-day journey on the self-built raft to prove that South Americans could have reached and settled Polynesia in pre-Columbian times.

29 April, 1975 – Hubert van Es takes the famous picture of a helicopter airlift from a rooftop

The image shows South Vietnamese civilians employed by the U.S. trying to escape Saigon on the day before the city's fall. It came to symbolise the American defeat in Vietnam.

30 April, 1993 – CERN announces that World Wide Web protocols will remain free

By offering the software required to operate a web server with an open license, the European organisation ensured its dissemination, and the WWW flourished.