on the uptake of Double Dutch?

The ill-fated attempt for Scotland to establish a trading colony on the Isthmus of Panama was opposed implacably by the English, for a number of reasons (local hegemony, not wanting to offend Spain etc). English bankers, and those they could influence, refused to offer finance. The money had to be raised by private subscription, in Scotland, and it was - £400,000 in just a few months. This - and here's the amazing part - was about half the total money currently in circulation in Scotland at the time, or about one fifth of the total wealth of Scotland.

It was all lost, of course, and Scotland was effectively bankrupt. It's one of the reasons why the Act of Union happened soonafter. But as a whip-round, it takes some beating.

In the New Forest, there was a huge oak tree on which they hang convicted highwaymen and thieves. Not a big deal.

EXCEPT, the nickname of the tree was the Naked Man.

Amazing.

It's still there today, although only a stump as it was damaged during a thunder storm during the second world war.

more Dutch people speak good English than do English people.

I've got to say that open minded that I am I find it sad that when walking down the Holloway Road recently it is now hard to hear
English being spoken. I boarded the 29 bus last tuesday to go from Holloway to Camden town to see Robbie Williams at the BBC Electric Proms I have to say that there was more English spoken on the Greek Island of Skiathos on the bus than on the 29 bus in London. I personally can't help saying it's sad. I welcome folk from everywhere but I find it sad that the lead language is no longer English.
Please don't shoot me down with PC stuff. I'm suprised that we've got to Bladerunner territory so soon.

The dining table in a house was known as 'the board' - it was literally a big board, not attached to the legs - that's where the tradition of it being impolite to put your elbows on the table comes from - if you did it in Tudor times you ended up with dinner in your lap.
Also on the other side of 'the board' were marked playing surfaces for different games - you turned it over after dinner and played. Hence: board games.
It is also the origin of 'board room' & 'chairman of the board'.
Not amazing, perhaps. But quite interesting...

I saw Starkey give a lecture on Henry VIII at the Sheldonian in Oxford earlier this year - it was absolutely fascinating - a really captivating speaker.

The Netherlands: The South Pacific island Rum

Britain: The North Atlantic island Manhattan

Prince Albert died in 1861 and Queen Victoria was heartbroken. Immediately after his death, she vowed to remain dressed in black until the end of her days - and she did so for the next 40-odd years. Everyone in her presence was expected to also wear black as a mark of respect.

As this period of mourning lasted for such a long time, it became the norm for formal gatherings (not just funerals) to feature the wearing of black. Prior to 1861, dandy English gentlemen would try to out-do each other with increasingly outlandish and garish colours.

(and this is on the official NASA podcast about the first moon landing):

they quite seriously considered not taking a camera.

The numbers were so close to the wire that all excess baggage had to be left out.

And the only reason they relented was that they reckoned the US public might want to see some return on their tax dollars. Nothing to do with being the single most momentous event in human history.

I don't know about you, but I get annoyed if I go to the beach and discover I've left the camera behind ...

Laid down in February 1905, she went to sea a year and a day later, rendering obsolete all other capital ships then afloat and sparking an arms-race which threatened to bankrupt nations. Britannia ruled the waves.

As a percentage of GDP, the new Queen Elizabeth SuperCarriers, due for launch at some time in the future, are of similar cost. They will be ignored by everyone. Britannia might rule the Solent. If none of the Yanks are around.

...the first programme in Andrew Marr's new series, and gobsmacked at some of the facts about Britain in the 1900s that I had never realised.

For example, the British invented concentration camps (resulting in the deaths of thousands of Boer women and children) as well as coming up with eugenics.

Also, that Edward VII's diet was truly monumental. Example of a day's nosh in the royal household: breakfast (the works, plus kedgeree), lunch (something like 5 courses, including lobster salad), tea (sarnies, cakes), dinner (12 courses, guests or not) and supper (cheese, biscuits). Blimey.

According to the National Archive, during the "Raj" (the period which followed the Indian Mutiny/Rebellion in 1857/8) there were only 20,000 British citizens in India, which had a total population of 300 million.

The John O'Farrell book "Utterly Impartial History Of Britain" is full of facts like these, and rather funny too.

Having said that. sat here in the office preparing for my morning meeting, I can't for the life of me remember any of them to share......

In July 2006, a Liverpool Councillor proposed renaming certain streets because their names were linked to the slave trade. It was soon discovered that Penny Lane, named after James Penny, a wealthy 18th-century slave ship owner and strong opponent of abolitionism, was one of these streets. Ultimately, city officials decided to forego the name change and re-evaluate the entire renaming process.

Here's a handful. Sorry if you've heard them before.

1. When Joseph Smith, the founder and prophet of the Mormon church was killed, his successor, Brigham Young, married all of his wives.

2. There were more bars in New York during prohibition than before.

3. The following events all happened on January 30th: 1649 - Execution of Charles I, 1933 - Election of Adolf Hitler, 1948 - Assassination of Gandhi, 1969 - Beatles play rooftop concert, 1972- Bloody Sunday.

they did not believe that the earth was flat. The ancient Greeks and Chinese, as well as European scholars of the middle ages knew perfectly well that the earth is spherical. This is a modern myth which gained credence as a reaction to the the theory propagated by the Samuel Rowbotham, an early progenator of the Flat Earth Theory/Society.

The Celts made roads, before the Roman occupation. They were large wooden tracks for local use.

When studying for my dissertation, this one fascinated me. In 1645, the Marquis of Montrose, leading a small army of highlanders and royalists marched for 36 hours over virtually impenetrable highland, kept his troops awake all night ready for war, and laid siege to the castle at Inverlochy in the morning, despite being outnumbered 2 to 1. Needless to say, Montrose and the Royalists lost only miminal casualties, whilst the parliamentarians, led by the Marquis of Argyll, lost nearly half their troops. Fascinating stuff.

to buy a 200 year old medical textbook for a doctor pal's birthday. Contained within was the warning that those who indulged in masturbation had been possessed by the devil.

Next year sees the centenary of this dreadful mining disaster, where 344 men and boys were killed. This was the worst accident in the Lancashire coal field, and the third worst in Britain. The site is just a couple of miles from where I live. It makes my aching back and mouse finger after hours of computer "play" seem pretty pathetic really. We are very lucky these days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretoria_Pit_Disaster

Did you know there are less people living in London now than before WW2? The end of widespread domestic service meant the population shrank and it's never quite reached 1930's levels (something like 11 million) since.

Not Pakistan, not India, Egypt, Algeria, Syria. It's Indonesia. I don't know why, that always seems surprising to me.

Horse chestnut trees are a source of acetone which is used to make cordite. During World War I, there was a huge demand for cordite for making munitions but it was difficult to extract. The chemist who made the extraction of cordite from horse chestnuts possible on an industrial scale was Chaim Weizmann, a leading Zionist. Lloyd George was so grateful to Weizmann that he permitted the chemist free access to A J Balfour, the man behind the Balfour Declaration. Weizmann went on to be instrumental in the founding of the State of Israel and became its first President.

Regardless of where you stand on the Palestine issue, keep that in mind the next time you play conkers.

is self-sufficient in pineapples

suggests that Henry VII defeated a force twice the size of his because he had (or his French mercenaries had) primitive cannon and arqeb,arq, erm, primitive handguns.

a foreign gent came in to join my DVD Club.....on seeing his ID, I said "Ah, another Polish Fella".
He said. "Piss off, I'm from Lithuania... if you ask me, there are too many Poles here in Aberdeen. They all want to f**k off back to Warsaw and leave us well alone, taking our jobs, the b******s".
True story.

The Wannsee conference of 1942, which met partly discuss the specifics of how the final solution of the Jewish question would be implemented, lasted for only about an hour and a half. In this meeting, which discussed deportation, further sterilisation and execution of European Jews, was also to assert the authority of Reinhard Heydrich over the carrying out of the plans. He actively wanted to be in control of the decimation of millions of people. There was music on in the background. It was Bach's Brandenburg concertos (according the guide we had when we there).

Hitler wasn't even there.

There are some interesting programmes on Radio 4 at present charting it's illustrious past.

Seems the suburb of Maida Vale was named after the Battle of Maida (4 July 1806), which was a British victory against the First French Empire outside the town of San Pietro di Maida in Calabria, Italy, then a part of the Kingdom of Naples.

comes from the practice of the more prosperous slave-owners of the Northern states selling-off their surplus slaves down the Mississippi River to the`poorer and less salubrious plantations

Bernard James Tindal Bosanquet (1877-1936)invented this "greatest conjuring trick in the history of the game (of cricket)". A ball which, on leaving the bowler's hand, seems to be a leg-break (heading for the off-stump)but instead, cunningly breaks the other way, towards the leg-stump.
Devised originally as a party-piece to amuse the other players of his side, it devastated the cricketers of Australia and New Zealand when he used it against them on the 1902 tour of those countries by Lord Hawke's team.
The tourists won all 18 of their games in New Zealand and then caused the collapse of the home team when Lord Hawke's side travelled on to Australia. England beat the Aussies by 157 runs and regained the Ashes. Someone asked Bosanquet if his googly might be illegal. "No," he replied, "Only immoral."

the total amount of claims submitted to State of California Comptroller for Expeditions against Native American Indians (mostly carried out by militia)was $1,293,179.20.

I should have added more to this posting - but it would be interesting to know what the modern day equivalent of $1M in 1855 would be. These militia were put together basically to oppress and murder the Native Americans in California. 'The Gold Rush' provided a backdrop to this activity which decimated the tribes in the West.

...designer of several of the most popular/influential electric guitars (the telecaster, stratocaster and precision bass in particular) couldn't play a note.

was captained by the great grandfather of Buster Bloodvessel.

he's wearing that classic cowboy hard man garment a baggy student cardy!

In 1845, Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid declared his intention to send 10,000 sterling to Irish farmers but Queen Victoria requested that the Sultan send only 1,000 sterling, because she had sent only 2,000 sterling. The Sultan sent the 1,000 sterling but also secretly sent 3 ships full of food. The English courts tried to block the ships, but the food arrived at Drogheda harbour and was left there by Ottoman sailors.