The place to learn about the past and present,
To survive was one-in-a-million, but to almost completely recover is incomprehensible. The side-effects, however, made him shunned by decent society On September 13, 1848, an unbelievable medical marvel occurred. A foreman named Phineas Gage was toiling at the head of a work-gang. They were blasting rock to prepare the roadbed to lay railroad track on... Continue Reading →
Presenting the biggest coins in the world - The world's No.1 is as heavy as a car! When the Royal Mint minted a massive £10,000 coin in 2021, it got me wondering what the biggest coins in the world were. So, I reached into my bag of tricks and I came up with this; the... Continue Reading →
Half a dozen UK movies that left their mark, that veered away from the Hollywood vibe and portray contemporary British culture before the Age of the Internet These are films I enjoyed in my younger days, just out of school, forever raiding my absent brother’s fabled stack of VHS movies. Each review includes the classic... Continue Reading →
The Prince who murdered his family because he couldn’t marry his one true love This is the grisly story of a truly astounding crime. In 2001 the Nepalese Royal Family was slaughtered in a frenzied shooting spree. What makes this more disturbing is that it was committed by one of their own family members. On... Continue Reading →
The story of when the king of Britain adopted a feral child from the forests of Germany into his royal court When King George I brought a feral boy into the British Royal Court in 1726 he caused a sensation among London’s high society. ‘Peter the Wild Boy’ as he came to be called, neither... Continue Reading →
Why a friendly, sociable local killed 12 people was a mystery to most. Here, his life is scrutinised to expose how it unravelled before its fatal climax A puzzling episode of Cumbrian history that bewilders locals to this very day. After an angry confrontation with some colleagues, a man named Derrick Bird shot dead his... Continue Reading →
Read about how the Wuppertal Schwebebahn came to be and its 120 years of service This is the story of the oldest suspension railway in the world. But its origins go back much further than when it first opened for business at the turn of the 20th Century. Railway from The Future Film footage (below)... Continue Reading →
The story of Chris Foster, the man who committed familicide rather than face the bailiffs One of the most unsettling crimes you’ll ever read about; on the 26th of August 2008, Chris Foster murdered his wife and teenage daughter and set his house on fire before killing himself. What went so wrong for the once-successful... Continue Reading →
Shed a tear for three British aristocrats, with their millions of pounds and stately homes, who suffered such misfortune, one might barely distinguish them from commoners Privileged aristocrats are human and so suffer poor luck and judgement like the rest of us. But for us unwashed masses there is a certain guilty pleasure in seeing... Continue Reading →
The tiny isle of Lundy has sheltered rebels, eccentrics and even a band of Barbary pirates. This is the story of Lundy’s rich history. Map showing Lundy to the south of the busy Bristol Channel Lundy seems an innocuous island; sitting just 10 nautical miles (19km) off the Devon coastline, it’s a mere three miles... Continue Reading →
History and Things 