The 1948 Summer Olympics known as the Games of the XIV Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event, held in London, United Kingdom from 29 July to 14 August 1948. After a twelve-year hiatus caused by the outbreak of World War II; the 1940 Olympic Games had been scheduled for Tokyo, for Helsinki. This was the second occasion that London had hosted the Olympic Games, having hosted them in 1908, forty years earlier; the Olympics would again return to London 64 years in 2012, making London the first city to have hosted the games three times, the only such city until Paris and Los Angeles host their third games in 2024 and 2028, respectively. The 1948 Olympic Games were the first of two summer Olympic Games held under the IOC presidency of Sigfrid Edström; the event came to be known as the Austerity Games, because of the difficult economic climate and rationing imposed in the aftermath of World War II. No new venues were built for the games, athletes were housed in existing accommodation at the Wembley area instead of an Olympic Village, as were the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games and the subsequent 1952 Games in Helsinki.

A record 59 nations were represented by 4,104 athletes, 3,714 men and 390 women, in 19 sport disciplines. Germany and Japan were not invited to participate in the games. One of the star performers at the Games was Dutch sprinter Fanny Blankers-Koen. Dubbed "The Flying Housewife", the thirty-year-old mother of two won four gold medals in athletics. In the decathlon, American Bob Mathias became the youngest male to win an Olympic gold medal at the age of seventeen; the most individual medals were won by Veikko Huhtanen of Finland who took three golds, a silver and a bronze in men's gymnastics. The United States won the most gold and overall medals, having 300 athletes compared to Britain's 398. In June 1939, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 1944 Olympic Summer Games to London, ahead of Rome, Budapest, Helsinki and Athens. World War II stopped the plans and the Games were cancelled so London again stood as a candidate for 1948. Great Britain handed the 1948 games to the United States due to post-war financial and rationing problems, but King George VI said that this could be the chance to restore Britain from World War II.

The official report of the London Olympics shows that there was no case of London being pressed to run the Games against its will. It says: The Games of 1944 had been allocated to London and so it was that in November 1945, the Chairman of the British Olympic Council, Lord Burghley, went to Stockholm and saw the president of the International Olympic Committee to discuss the question of London being chosen for this great event; as a result, an investigating committee was set up by the British Olympic Council to work out in some detail the possibility of holding the Games. After several meetings they recommended to the council that the Lord Mayor of London should be invited to apply for the allocation of the Games in 1948. In June 1946 the IOC, through a postal vote, gave the summer Games to London and the winter competition to St Moritz. London was selected ahead of Baltimore, Lausanne, Los Angeles, Philadelphia. London, which had hosted the 1908 Summer Olympics, became the second city to host the Olympics twice.

London became the first city to host the Olympics for a third time when the city hosted the 2012 Summer Olympics. Lord Burghley, a gold medal winner at the 1928 Olympics, member of the International Olympic Committee, President of the Amateur Athletics Association was named Chairman of the Organising and Executive Committees; the other members of the committees were: Colonel Evan Hunter, General Secretary of the British Olympic Association, Chef de mission for Great Britain. E. Fern. J. Holt. B. Cowley of the London Press and Advertising. B. Studdert, Managing Director of the Army & Navy Stores. E. Porritt, a member of the IOC for New Zealand who resided in London. F. Rous, Secretary of The Football Association. Olympic pictograms were introduced for the first time. There were twenty of them—one for each Olympic sport and three separate pictograms for the arts competition, the opening ceremony and the closing ceremony, they were intended for use on tickets. The background of each pictogram resembled an escutcheon.

Olympic pictograms appeared again 16 years and were used at all subsequent Summer Olympics. At the time of the Games food and building were still subject to the rationing imposed during the war in Britain. Athletes were given the same increased rations as dockers and miners, 5,467 calories a day instead of the normal 2,600. Building an Olympic Village was deemed too expensive, athletes were housed in existing accommodation. Male competitors stayed at RAF camps in Uxbridge and West Drayton, an Army camp in Richmond; the British Red Cross provided medical facilities at the Richmond Park camp. These were the first games to be held following the death of Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the International Olympic Committee, in 1937, they were the last to incl

Ellman's reagent is a chemical used to quantify the number or concentration of thiol groups in a sample. It was developed by George L. Ellman. In Ellman's original paper, he prepared this reagent by oxidizing 2-nitro-5-chlorobenzaldehyde to the carboxylic acid, introducing the thiol via sodium sulfide, coupling the monomer by oxidization with iodine. Today, this reagent is available commercially. Thiols react with this compound, cleaving the disulfide bond to give 2-nitro-5-thiobenzoate, which ionizes to the TNB2− dianion in water at neutral and alkaline pH; this TNB2− ion has a yellow color. This reaction is rapid and stoichiometric, with the addition of one mole of thiol releasing one mole of TNB; the TNB2− is quantified in a spectrophotometer by measuring the absorbance of visible light at 412 nm, using an extinction coefficient of 14,150 M−1 cm−1 for dilute buffer solutions, a coefficient of 13,700 M−1 cm−1 for high salt concentrations, such as 6 M guanidinium hydrochloride or 8 M urea. The extinction coefficient for dilute solutions was underestimated in the original 1959 publication, as 13,600 M−1 cm−1, as noted in a recent article, this mistake has persisted in the literature.

Commercial DTNB may not be pure, so may require recrystallization to obtain accurate and reproducible results. Ellman's reagent can be used for measuring low-molecular mass thiols such as glutathione in both pure solutions and biological samples, such as blood, it can measure the number of thiol groups on proteins. Quantitation of sulfhydryls DTNB, Ellman’s reagent

The 1960–61 British Home Championship international football tournament saw a series of high scoring games, with 40 goals scored in just six matches - a ratio of 6.66 goals per game. England took the British title after a final match at Wembley in which they put nine goals past Scotland, who returned with three of their own. Teams in this period fielded as many as five strikers, hoping to outscore opponents rather than rely on heavy defence; this tactic paid dividends for England, whose haul of 19 included seven for Jimmy Greaves, whilst both Bobby Charlton and Bobby Smith each scored in each of England's three games. England had begun the tournament well, winning 5–2 against Ireland in Belfast, whilst the Welsh beat a tough Scottish side at home. Welsh hopes of tournament success were disabused in their second match, where England took them apart 5–1, whilst the Irish were again on the reverse of a heavy defeat, losing 5–2 in Glasgow against Scotland. In the tournament's final games, Wales beat Ireland 5–1 to claim second spot, leading to England and Scotland's dramatic finale.

Players at the tournament included a medley of stars from the 1950s, young players who would take the 1960s by storm. This line-up included Danny Blanchflower and Peter McParland for Ireland, Ivor Allchurch and John Charles for Wales, Denis Law and Dave Mackay for Scotland and an England team including Bobby Charlton, Johnny Haynes, Jimmy Greaves and Bobby Robson, some of whom would win the 1966 FIFA World Cup