Professors
Art critic
Pandora's Inbox
Make a wish
Get a job
The Fall of the Onomatopoeian Empire
Robert De Nero
Rome 1582
Barbarians
Night of the long knives
The Pedants' Revolt
King Tut
History repeats
Boston 1876
Alternative gladiator
Aethelred the Oven Ready
Siren

Fact of the Day

Highwayman Benjamin Child used his ill-gotten gains to discharge all the debtors in Salisbury jail. He was hanged in 1722.

Quote of the Day

"What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? "
~ Abraham Lincoln

On This Day

1135 Henry I died, quite possibly of lamprey (horrible, often parasitic, jawless fish) poisoning
1851 Edmund Campion, Jesuit priest, was hanged, drawn and quartered
1887 Sherlock Holmes was introduced to the world when Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet was published in the Beeton's Christmas annual.
1942 The Beveridge Report was published. This landmark document became the blueprint for the modern British welfare system.
1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat so white people could sit down in Montgomery, Alabama. Although her actions sparked protests and eventually the integration of the bus system, she was also jailed for that initial refusal.
1990 The last rock separating Britain and France was removed in the Channel Tunnel, connecting the two countries for the first time since waters had rushed over the connecting land-bridge thousands of years previously.