Authors
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Emperor Titus Flavius Vespasian
No one in their right mind would have predicted that Titus Flavius Vespasian would ever be anything more than an eccentric senator. They were an obscure family from the small village of Reate. His father had been a banker and his mother from a family of modest means. However, according to Sutonius’ Life of the Caesars, the auguries when she was brought to bed with Vespasian were favorable. Sabinus, the boy’s father, is said to have been greatly impressed by an inspection of a victim’s entrails. He is said to have congratulated his mother on having a grandson who would become Emperor. She roared with laughter and said: ‘Fancy, you…
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Bite Size- Dr Horace Emmet
In 1889, one Dr Horace Emmet lectured on the secret of eternal youth at Magdalene College, Cambridge - he claimed that, by administering himself the ground testicles of red squirrels by way of injections, he was physically some 30 years younger and could 'visit' his wife daily. However, just eight weeks after his announcement, his wife left him for a younger man and Emmet himself was dead shortly after, from a cerebral haemorrhage.JJ [...]
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The Tunguska Event
On the morning of June 30, 1908, a fireball, that has been estimated to have been up to 30 million degrees Fahrenheit in the center, was seen roaring across the sky. At 7:17 A.M. in Russia, the flying object exploded above the Earth creating shock waves that registered 5.0 on the Richter scale and an air blast that was so strong that it sent waves across the globe, twice. It was reported that there was not one single explosion but a series of explosions that occurred which could be heard 745 miles away. Once the explosions were over, dust clouds rose up miles into the atmosphere. The sun reflected off…
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Dick Turpin – Stand and Deliver
On the 7th April 1739, notorious highwayman Richard Turpin was hanged for his crimes, most notably horse, cattle and sheep stealing, robbery with violence, and murder at the Knavesmire in York. Turpin was documented to have been born in the Blue Bell Inn, Hempstead, the son of John Turpin who has been accredited with trades including butchery, farming and inn-keeping, and Mary Elizabeth Parmenter in c1705, the fifth out of their six children and as a young man completed an apprenticeship as a butcher, in Whitechapel. He set up in business for himself in the Essex area. Some sources claim that his father had links with smuggling and as a…
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War breaks out in American colonies
In 1774, following the infamous Boston Tea Party the previous December, when residents had dumped a cargo of imported tea into the Harbour at Boston, Massachusetts, the British governor to the state had been ordered, using amendments to the Massachusetts Colonial Government Charter, to disband the locally elected councils in favour of members appointed by the Governor. In retaliation, a shadow patriot government, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress was set up by the dissenters. They compiled their objections, the Suffolk Resolves, named so after Suffolk County, where Boston was the main city, to refuse to obey the Massachusetts Government act and threatened to boycott imported goods from Britain, unless the ‘Intolerable…
