In the twenty first century, with the internet age now in its fourth decade, we have become used to scams and cons perpetrated by the unseen. Emails promising magnificent returns on modest investments, extort money from the vulnerable, or account details are obtained by the implication that security has been compromised.  Even before internet fraud… Read More

  Agatha Miller was born on 15 September 1890, the third child of American stockbroker Frederick Miller and his wife Clara. A wealthy family, they lived in a villa named Ashfield in the coastal town of Torquay, which is in the English county of Devon. Although the family home was in the south west of… Read More

  In 1912 an antiquarian bookseller bought a very old book. Nothing unusual there.  After all, booksellers need to buy books in order to be able to sell them! What was unusual about this particular book, however, was that it was, and has remained, completely indecipherable. Wilfrid Voynich, the bookseller in question, had opened his… Read More

  At 29,029 feet, Mount Everest is the world’s tallest mountain. By 1953, despite numerous attempts, no one had  successfully scaled the Himalayan  peak. That year, a British expedition led by John Hunt, would attempt to become the first to conquer the summit. The team opted to try a route through the Khumbu Icefall and… Read More

  If you are familiar with the work of William Topaz McGonagall, I apologise for reminding you about it. If not, then read on, and prepare to be amazed by the sheer inability of the man. As a poet he is unequalled. His work is so bad that it has become legendary, and he has… Read More

  The Darwin Awards, named in honour of the evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin, commemorate those who improve the human gene pool by removing themselves from it. That is to say, the recipient is someone who dies as a result of their own stupidity. Needless to say, the award is always given posthumously!   Take, for… Read More

  Archaeologists spend a lot of time digging things up. I like, on occasion, to state the obvious! As the science of archaeology has evolved over the last century, existing techniques have improved, and new ones developed, that enable artefacts to be dated with reasonable accuracy. Dendrochronology can be used to date wood through tree… Read More

  The 26th June 2013 was a monumental day in aviation history. “Why, what happened?”, I hear you say. Well, I’ll tell you. But in order to do so we need to go back over 140 years, to the 1st January 1874. On this day in Leutershausen, Bavaria, to Karl and Babetta Weisskopf, was born a… Read More

On a cold, wet night in February 1820, an intoxicated man staggered out of a Dublin bar and collapsed nearby. By the time the drenched and shivering man was discovered the following morning, he was in a bad way. Within a few days he was dead. So it was that pneumonia had claimed the life… Read More

On Saturday 30th January 1649, King Charles I was led to the scaffold erected outside Banqueting House in Whitehall, London. Apparently it was a cold day, and so the King wore two thick shirts to ensure he didn’t shiver from cold, and so avoid giving the impression of being afraid. Charles asked the executioner to… Read More