A few weeks ago I wrote a blog on Colonel Blood and his audacious career that involved stealing the Crown Jewels and in the last few days I’ve been reading about a discovery of some Arabian coins unearthed in an orchard on Rhode Island that might shed new light on an incredibly infamous pirate, Captain… Continue reading Solving the mystery of Captain Henry Every – The Pirate who became the subject of the first world-wide manhunt from India to North America
Category: history
Posts predominantly history related.
The Mechanical Turk Chess-Player that shocked the world!
When we think of robots and artificial intelligence, it’s easy to think that it is a modern 21st century obsession or at least of 20th century science fiction such as Star Trek. This is not entirely the case. One of my favourite works of art I have ever seen is the The beautiful, magical Silver Swan… Continue reading The Mechanical Turk Chess-Player that shocked the world!
Coronavirus Diary 75 – Finding a Holy and Magical Well in St Albans.
I’ve been to a few Holy Wells in my time, some ancient pagan wells and some slightly less ancient but still extremely old Christian ones. The problem with wells in cities and particularly near to London is that they are either blocked up or entirely built over. Some times is simply due to the rise… Continue reading Coronavirus Diary 75 – Finding a Holy and Magical Well in St Albans.
From bad boys to the hello girls – the origins of the Telephone Operator
As was often the case with Victorian era workplaces, many of the worst and most menial jobs were filled by boys and this was the case with the early Telegraph networks. As revolutionary as it seems to go from telegrams to spoken calls, it wasn’t immediately apparent to the first telephone network providers that… Continue reading From bad boys to the hello girls – the origins of the Telephone Operator
The monument to Admiral Collingwood
Everyone knows of the famous Battle of Trafalgar and the great old HMS Victory which you can visit with Ye Olde England Tours when life gets back to normal. I think it is perhaps the best day out! Trafalgar Square is of course known around the world along with Nelsons Column which I take so many… Continue reading The monument to Admiral Collingwood
Colonel Blood – The man who stole the Crown Jewels and lived to tell the tale!
The Crown Jewels have long been in one of the most secure locations in the world. Without giving too much away they are stored being bomb proof glass in rooms with over 100 hidden cameras and hi-tech security measures and all of this is inside what is effectively a giant walk-in stainless steel vault which… Continue reading Colonel Blood – The man who stole the Crown Jewels and lived to tell the tale!
The Legend of Mary Overie
Everyone knows of that famous old miser Ebenezer Scrooge in the the literature of Charles Dickens but right in the heart of one the most Dickensian feeling part of Central London there is a story that predates Ebenezer by 1,000 years and is largely unknown by everyone except for a few hardy visitors to explore… Continue reading The Legend of Mary Overie
An account of when my house was almost hit by a Nazi rocket in WW2
Over the last week or two I have been reading old magazines of histories and memories of my village, rather similar to some of the ones I write myself. A lady by the name of Mollie Thomas strikes particularly close to home as though in her 80’s, writes about her time growing up here in… Continue reading An account of when my house was almost hit by a Nazi rocket in WW2
The story of how a Tyneside ship ended up as the Resolute desk of the President of the United States Part Two
Following on from last weeks post on HMS Resolute, we pick up the account in this second blog post. On 10 September 1855, the abandoned HMS Resolute was found adrift by the American whaler George Henry, captained by James Budington of Groton, Connecticut in an ice floe off Cape Walsingham of Baffin Island, 1,200 miles… Continue reading The story of how a Tyneside ship ended up as the Resolute desk of the President of the United States Part Two
The story of how a Tyneside ship ended up as the Resolute desk of the President of the United States Part One
It’s hard to say much about the desk of the Prime Minister outside the Corona virus, it is almost unheard of him or her to address the nation or indeed The Queen outside her customary Christmas message of goodwill and even then she has more desks than I had hot dinners in 2020 so whilst… Continue reading The story of how a Tyneside ship ended up as the Resolute desk of the President of the United States Part One
Stephen Liddell 