February 3, 2010 – 7:00 am
Winnie-the-Pooh was first published in 1926. Of course, he was quite old already – A.A. Milne took ages to get round to writing about him.
I have always hoped, as no doubt you have, that I was related to Mr Sanders.
I have undertaken some extensive and thorough research and have some really wonderful news.
No doubt you [...]
October 1, 2009 – 6:00 am
I have been making a very careful study of the cave paintings to be found in Milton Keynes and have made a remarkable discovery concerning the invention of the wheel.
Ugh the Caveman was very fond of biscuits. Not gingernuts of course, that would be ridiculous. They were an oatmeal confection cooked in hairy mammoth fat [...]
September 17, 2009 – 6:00 am
Le Carnaval des Animaux (The Carnival of the Animals) is a musical suite of fourteen movements by the French Romantic composer Camille Saint-Saëns. The orchestral work has a duration between 22 and 30 minutes.
There are fourteen movements:
I- Introduction et marche royale du Lion (Introduction and Royal March of the Lion)
Strings and two pianos: The introduction [...]
August 17, 2009 – 6:00 am
Stephen Hawking had a quite a good stab at this subject, but there were several omissions. (He’ll be dead gutted you said that! LO,TG Ed)
He left out the derivations of certain words and the reasons why they are associated with time.
Decade.
When this was first introduced into the English language it was not a definite time [...]
The Forth Bridge
The Forth Bridge was built by Sir William Arrol & Co. between 1883 and 1890. Sir Benjamin Baker – “one of the most remarkable civil engineers Britain ever produced” – and his colleague Allan Stewart, received the major credit for it’s design and were responsible for overseeing the building work. During its construction, [...]
THE TORTOISE OLYMPICS
The first tortoise Olympic Games were held in 1832.
The use of a cannon to start the long jump was banned in 1909, when Archibald ‘Cara Pace’ Thomas the Third couldn’t be found after the event. (Avid Reader, you’re thinking the time scale doesn’t add up – a strict time table cannot be adhered [...]
I have always been interested in the history of words.
Apparently, a long time ago, there was a Viking family that lived in Rye, in East Sussex; which isn’t that far from where I live now.
The youngest son was a bit of a tearaway and used to disappear for days at a time in his tiny [...]
Post it notes.
The first postage stamp was the Penny Black introduced in 1840. This stamp in pristine condition can be worth £2000. When left in a pocket of your jeans and put through a 40C wash it is then worth less than its original value.
There remains an old statute from 1869 that if your postman [...]
The Trojan Hearse.
A lot of the fascinating parchments I inherited when moving into the Cliff Top Residence concern information about weird goings on with members of the clergy.
For instance, one stained and dog-eared manuscript describes the Very Reverend Charletton Grimsbody, who was defrocked in 1738 by the then Bishop of Wainwright.
By piecing together snippets of [...]
I have been doing some intensive research into the history of the humble bicycle.
I came across some very interesting references in the archives of the Dorset Council.
One of the most famous attractions in Dorset is the river Piddle, and it was in the village of Little Piddle straddling this waterway that Mr and Mrs Broodingstock [...]
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