The place to learn about the past and present,
The fraudster and swindler who almost talked his way into becoming king of a tiny mountain realm, armed with a catalogue of lies and a manifesto for modernisation To be a vocational swindler, fraudster, conman, trickster, scam artist, is to be someone typically unconscionable; someone who is successful in one’s lies by telling them with... Continue Reading →
The greatest football teams based on consecutive championships, unbeaten runs, and international titles to prove their claims to have been the best of their times 19th Century The 'Team of All Talents' takes on Aston Villa, 1894-95 The world’s first official national-level competitive football began in England and Scotland in 1872 and 1873, respectively. As... Continue Reading →
The guide to enjoying the entire Mad Max franchise across six movie nights and eight live-action films Mad Max I “Look. Any longer out on that road and I'm one of them, you know? A terminal crazy... only I got a bronze badge to say I'm one of the good guys.” - Max Mad Max... Continue Reading →
Click for part 3 Battle of Bataan, 1942 With many parallels to Britain's own catastrophic Fall of Malaya & Singapore, the USA lost its final foothold in the western Pacific after US forces fought for and lost the Bataan Peninsula on Luzon island in early April. US Commonwealth forces under the command of General Douglas... Continue Reading →
Click for part 2 Apia Cyclone, 1889 It was during the peak years of Western-state nationalism when countries like the USA, Britain, Germany and Italy strutted around the world with their chests puffed out that a small US Naval squadron was wrecked in rueful circumstances. A storm had been brewing in the Samoan Islands since... Continue Reading →
“History is written by the winners,” quipped Napoleon. Despite his vast compilation of conquests at home and abroad, Bonapart and his compatriots didn't always achieve victory. This four-part article includes the worst military calamity of every decade, from the founding of the First Republic in 1792 until Algeria's independence in the 1960s – failures little... Continue Reading →
Out of all the Star Wars fan films on Youtube that have been created by the legions of its fans around the world, here are the 10 greatest live-action fan films that truly enrich the Star Wars universe While researching my epic 'Star Wars Live-Action Expanded Universe in Chronological Order' compilation, I discovered there are... Continue Reading →
My two-day hike along the whole Worcestershire Way, from Great Malvern to Bewdley Out of the hundreds of long-distance hiking trails that criss-cross Britain, the Worcestershire Way (WW) starts pretty much right outside my front door, so it seemed only right that I cross this one off my list sooner rather than later. At 31... Continue Reading →
The lowdown on the ten most important Greek cities in the ancient world, their statuses today, and what remains of their archealogical wonders Antioch Antioch may have been a small Greek trading colony before Seleucus I Nicator founded the city shortly after 300 BC. Seleucus was a general of Alexander the Great’s - the Macedonian... Continue Reading →
Part 3 Battle of Spion Kop, 1900 The British, reinforced after the trauma of 'Black Week', were still labouring to relieve Ladysmith after almost three months of siege. General Buller decided on seizing Spion Kop because the hill stood slap-bang in the centre of Boer positions around Ladysmith. 20,000 troops, Mahatma Gandhi and Winston Churchill... Continue Reading →
History and Things 