The Pakistan Space Weather Centre (PSWC) was inaugurated on 20 August 2018, but its long history dates back to the 1950s. SUPARCO was established as the national space agency in 1961 and, along with other projects, started ionospheric and geomagnetic monitoring and research in the country. The milestones achieved in the discipline of space weather are mentioned that subsequently resulted in the establishment of PSWC. It is anticipated that PSWC will act as a Regional Warning Center in future.

This paper reviews Michael Rycroft's career as part of his 80th birthday celebrations in terms of the social and structural changes in international science. His contributions to research, teaching, and management across solar–terrestrial and ionospheric physics, and atmospheric and space science are also discussed. The paper is based on primary sources combined with the recollections of colleagues.

A brief history of the development of the Leith atmosphere model (LAM) by Chuck Leith around 1960 is presented. It is argued that the LAM was the first model that could reasonably be considered a comprehensive atmospheric general circulation model. The LAM was notable in that it had a representation of the hydrological cycle including prognostic cloud fields. The LAM left almost no footprint on the journal literature, but LAM simulations were published in pioneering computer animations.

A graphical record of a cruciform appearance in the night sky and possible lunar-halo display of 806 CE in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is philologically traced back to mid-ninth-century continental manuscripts, and a probable observational site is identified as around Sens in France. Possible lunar halos are examined by numerical ray tracing. Cruciform halos are shown to be faint and rare and thus notable. Halos from physically credible cloud ice crystals reproduce the manuscript renditions.

The German Geophysical Society was founded in 1922 as the Deutsche Seismologische Vereinigung. One of the 24 founders of this society was Karl Friedrich Almstedt. Born in 1891 and deceased in 1964, Almstedt represents a generation of academics and scientists who grew up during the decline of the European empires, experiencing the devastations of the two World Wars and the cruelties of the Nazi era as well as the resurrection of academic and cultural life in post-war Germany.

The Széchenyi István Geophysical Observatory, also known as the Nagycenk Geophysical Observatory (NCK), is the only measurement site in Hungary where atmospheric electricity (AE) measurements have been made continuously since 1961. Quasi-continuous records of electrical potential gradient (PG) and Schumann resonances (SRs) from NCK are among the longest time series of their kind in Europe. This paper commemorates the efforts of people who established and managed AE measurements at NCK.