Boadicea's Chariot

The Biter bit.

Score one for the little man. (Or, if you insist, ‘person.’)

Someone in the USA has foreclosed a debt on the Bank of America. Sheriff’s Deputies descended on a branch in Collier County, Florida and started to remove desks, chairs and other stuff – including the cash in the tellers’ drawers. The action was the result of a court judgement against the bank who had claimed that the individual was in arrears of payment of a non-existent mortgage – the property in question had been bought for cash.

I wonder could we start a trend?

Story here.

Captain Kidd’s Enduring Legend

My name was William Kidd, As I sailed, as I sailed,
My name was William Kidd, When I sailed,
My name was William Kidd; God’s laws I did forbid,
And so wickedly I did, As I sailed.

We’ve not long passed the three hundred and tenth anniversary of the execution of Captain William Kidd, by reputation one of the most notorious pirates who ever lived, of the Caribbean or any other of the seven seas. Taken to Execution Dock in Wapping, he was hanged on 23 May, 1701, a particularly brutal event. Twice the rope around his neck broke; the third time it held.

Afterwards, according to Admiralty custom, he was tied to a stake on the Thames Estuary to allow three tides to wash over him. Not content with that, his bloated body was then dipped in tar and squeezed into an iron frame at Tilbury, there hanged anew as a warning to all future pirates.

The problem is William Kidd, for all the notoriety subsequently attached to his name, was not a pirate at all but a privateer, acting under licence at a time when Britain was at war with France. That is to say, he was an ‘official’ pirate, whose plundering of enemy merchants had the sanction of the authorities, themselves party to a contract that promised a lucrative return in loot. In the end he was betrayed in a shabby act of duplicity by the very people who had sent him out in the first place.

My interest in the subject was whetted by an article written by Angus Konstan in the June issue of the BBC History Magazine (The Sacrifice of Captain Kidd). Taking this as my cue I did a spot of further research, coming up with some rather intriguing material. Continue reading “Captain Kidd’s Enduring Legend”

Mystery photo

Can you tell what it is yet? Continue reading “Mystery photo”

Cat mystic

Sorry but this tickled me too. This is definitely the last one… until I find something better 😉

Marriage

Marriage is a relationship in which one person is always right, and the other is a husband.

What I did on 4th June 1977

You know how, as you get older, you accumulate memories of seconds, hours, days, weeks, months or even decades when you would probably have preferred not to have been there, on mature reflection? They seemed like fun at the time but they might not have been such a good idea when you think back on it?

At 9.05 am on Friday 3rd June 1977, I was toying with a particularly tedious Note on Title and looking forward to 5pm and the weekend when a Partner stuck his head round the door and said:-

‘Could you use six tickets for Wembley tomorrow?’ Continue reading “What I did on 4th June 1977”

Bliz or Quog?

Creating a challenging quiz on-line is quite difficult. They end up being either too hard or too easy. Generally graphical quizzes are hard as they are more difficult to to research on the web, but achieving this makes composing them difficult, word quizzes tend to be much easier to research. Thinking about this reminded me of the ‘Round Britain Quiz’, which unfortunately is not yet available on the BBC iPlayer. Continue reading “Bliz or Quog?”