You probably didn’t know, and it also came as a surprise to me, that for 12 days, the city of Limerick in Ireland and its surrounding area was a self-declared Soviet Republic. This came about at the start of the Irish war of Independence as a protest against …
Who was the worst novelist in history? A worthy candidate would be a schoolmistress from Northern Ireland whose novels were so uniquely and thrillingly terrible that, in the early years of the last century, she became an ironic cause célèbre among the cultural luminaries of her time. Step forward, Amanda …
This famous piece of advice was supposedly given by Queen Victoria to her 17-year-old daughter, Princess Victoria Adelaide Mary Louise, on her wedding night in 1857, and has since become a catch-phrase for anything unpalatable. But it is most unlikely that the Queen ever said it; the phrase only appeared …
Sir Tatton Sykes ( 1826 – 1913) was convinced that in order to maintain good health the body should be kept at a constant temperature. In order to achieve this he had a collection of overcoats made for him, each a different colour and all made to fit over …
I am currently finishing off another small book, this time on superstitions, in my new “Short History” series. So I thought that I would share with you an excerpt – the history of the four-leaf clover… More than any other factor, the rarity of the four-leaf clover (normally, the clover …
I have just put together a short Kindle book on the history of beans. In which you will discover the decidedly odd history of the humble bean . Discover why Pythagarus would not eat beans, why it was forbidden for nuns to eat them, how a fart from eating beans started …
Did you know that kites originated in China as military signaling devices. Around 1200 B.C., a Chinese kite’s colour, its painted pattern, and particularly the air movements it was forced to execute communicated coded messages between camps. The ancient Chinese became so proficient in constructing huge, lightweight kites that they …
Dior. Blass. Prada. Givenchy. De la Renta. Von Furstenberg. Cassini. Cardin. Lauren. Gucci. History records the names of today’s fashion designers, but nowhere in its pages are the names of the tailors, dressmakers, and seamstresses who clothed royalty and nobility throughout the ages. They must have existed. Fashion certainly did. …
After some requests from you, I have posted a short video on YouTube about the peculiar history of the handkerchief. Do let me know if I should do some more…… https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLz-l1s1jZetlvsXm72LlZw
America acquired the song that is its national anthem about thirty-eight years after the country won its independence from Britain. It is somewhat ironic that the melody is British, and came from a song extolling the pleasures of wine and getting laid. The American lyrics were of course penned by …
