Back in May - July 2013 I took a series of photomicrographs of a Peacock's Feather up close under my Olympus BX53 microscope. I first uploaded these photos to Flickr sometime soon after, back in 2013. And that was that.

Three days ago it seems a person posted one of the photos to imgur. It was then reposted on Reddit by the same person. From here it went viral - to use that dreaded word. I have been contacted by no fewer than 10 publications asking for permissions to run with the story, including the likes of Gizmodo, The Colossal, PetaPixel, The Scientist, Metro Online UK etc.

The point is - this image was taken in 2013, posted for the whole internet to see and laid dormant for 3 years before it was rediscovered. Imagine how many other things are hiding in plain sight? We have this huge interconnected network but most things get lost in the sheer volume of data.

PS: If I combine all the mistakes made by journalists in to one sentence, it would go like this:

Nell, an American structural engineer used his Olympus BX52 microscope and a technique called focus stacking to improve the resolution of his peacock feather photos released this week.

The only correct thing in that statement is "Nell".