Hilarious! Who would have thought that the first use of term ‘OMG’ was not actually from one over-tanned blonde to another but actually between Admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher and Winston Churchill! That makes us laugh every time. An article in NYMag.com claims that a letter in 1917 between John and Winston went along the lines:
“I hear that a new order of Knighthood is on the tapis — O.M.G (Oh! My! God!)— Shower it on the Admiralty!!”
Hopefully he left out the emoticons and LOL at the end!
It may not surprise you to know but streets in Rome may show a little gender bias. If you throw a dart at the Rome street map, more often than not it will end up on a street named after a bloke rather than a woman. Not surprising, you may think, given the history. According to an article in the BBC, it all began when Maria Pia Ercolini, a geography teacher in Rome, wrote a cultural guide to Rome, celebrating the role of women in the city’s history.
“During the research I realised that you never see traces of women. History just cancelled the women - they’re not here,” she says.
They found that 7,575 (45.7%) of the city’s streets were named after men and only 580 (3.5%) were named after women.
“That’s proof of the discrimination,” she says.
Local authorities, who make the rules regarding street names, are now being urged to redress the balance.
It may not surprise you to know but streets in Rome may show a little gender bias. If you throw a dart at the Rome street map, more often than not it will end up on a street named after a bloke rather than a woman. Not surpising, you may think, given the history.
According to an article in the BBC, it all began when Maria Pia Ercolini, a geography teacher in Rome, wrote a cultural guide to Rome, celebrating the role of women in the city’s history.
“During the research I realised that you never see traces of women. History just cancelled the women - they’re not here,” she says.
They found that 7,575 (45.7%) of the city’s streets were named after men and only 580 (3.5%) were named after women.
“That’s proof of the discrimination,” she says.
Local authorities, who make the rules regarding street names, are now being urged to redress the balance.
You may have recently read our blog on some of the common misconceptions about London and its landmarks. There’s one in particular that has resonated with us and is great to bring up in conversation: the City of London has no roads.
This is partially true and comes down to an interesting technicality in that all of the streets, alleys and squares of the City had been set up before the word ‘road’ was officially used. This was towards the end of the 16th century when it was eventually used by Shakespeare to mean a fixed connection route or line on land.
However, some of the boundaries in London were changed in 1994, and as a result the eastern half of Goswell Road sits inside the Square Mile. Being half a road, though, you can still say there isn’t a ‘single’ road in the City!
Interesting stuff. Read more about the origins of the word road here and also check out some of the other debunked myths on the Londonist website.
Love this story in The Guardian. Apparently archaeologists have discovered that Iron Age Britons were importing olives from the Mediterranean a century before the Romans arrived.
A dig in an Iron Age well at at Silchester in Hampshire revealed an olive stone which came from a layer that had been dated back to the 1st century BC. Cool, huh?
Professor Mike Fulford, who led the dig said: “The survival of the olive stone, which was partly charred, was a freak of preservation. But there must be more; we need to dig a lot more wells.”
Having to work in digs resembling Glastonbury on a bad day, Fulford went on to say: “Conditions are the worst I can ever remember. Ironically, the wells are the easiest to work in because we have the pumps running there.”
It has been a century since the sinking of the Titanic and 247Moneybox.com have at least closed the file on this one.
This doesn’t see to be the case for Professor Donald Olson of Texas State University, however, who suggests that the Moon may have had a role in the catastrophe, and it must be said that it’s quite an interesting theory.
Everyone is well aware of the horrific story that claimed the lives of 1,517 travellers on 15th April 1912 after the “unsinkable” ship collided with an iceberg in the Atlantic sea. Professor Olson and his team of forensic astronomers believe that there may be a connection between the proximity of the Moon to the Earth and the resulting high tide, which may explain the vast number of icebergs that appeared in the Titanic’s path.
According to the physicists, on 4th January 1912 the Sun and Moon aligned, thereby enhancing the gravitational pull on one another, and during this time the Moon was the closest to the Earth than it had been for 1400 years.
As a result, this increased gravitational force on the Earth could have dislodged icebergs, causing them to float aimlessly around the Atlantic and eventually hit the ship.
Whether they’re on to something or not, one thing’s for sure – the debates will rage on and on…
A study for the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) reveals that there are 5.34 rooms in modern British houses.
The number of rooms in a dwelling has changed considerably over the ages, from a single room in medieval times, where you, and everyone else in the household, slept, ate, washed and generally hung out.
As time, and technical advances were introduced, separate rooms for specific functions were introduced, such as the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom.
More recently, the demand has been for individual bedrooms for each family member, but this has been offset by the trend for combined lounge/dining-room or kitchen/dining-room.
Heard about the Jane Austen conference in Forthworth, Texas, in the Libby Purves’ Midweek programme on Radio 4? Apparently everyone turns up in bonnets instead of stetsons.
There is a group of powerful women running the conference and speakers find it quite daunting to speak there. The conference is sponsored by an underwear manufacturer. They give away thongs and black panties to participants. Professor Vickery, a historian, has investigated the many devotees of Jane Austen.
Do have a listen at this site.
As a defensive plan today, it seems very naïve but in the context of its time it could have proved useful. According to Slate Magazine a fake Paris complete with replica Champs-Elysees was built at the end of the First World War in a bid to trick German bombers.
In 1917, airmen flew without radar and bombed at a glance of the white. They could therefore be deceived, especially at night, with false illuminations. Therefore, the French authorities thought to build a fictitious city destined to be destroyed by the Germans.
The expected decoys to take the Germans off the scent were a replica of the plaza de l’Étoile, where a dozen avenues converge and in whose centre stands the Arc de Triomphe and Opera with its large boulevards. and even a copy of the Gare du Nord railway station.
However, the fantasy Paris – 15 miles from the centre of the original – was not quite finished before the last air raid in Paris in September 1918 – which meant it was never tested.
There is a Viking legend which tells of a glowing “sunstone” that, when held up to the sky, showed the position of the Sun on a cloudy day. Scientists now believe that this legendary stone may have some truth to it.
The ancient Viking race were brilliant seamen, warriors and navigators, and are believed to have discovered North America hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus.
Now experiments suggest that a crystal, called an Iceland spar, can detect the sun within a degree of accuracy– allowing the legendary seafarers to navigate thousands of miles during Nordic nights and on cloudy days.
The transparent and calcite Iceland spar, was found in the wreck of an Elizabethan ship discovered 30 years ago off the coast of Alderney after it sank in 1592, just four years after the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The Alderney discovery opens new possibilities and the possibility of finding Iceland spars in other ancient shipwrecks looks promising.
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Representative Example
