Odd sayings that come from The 1500s
Do you know where the tradition of the bride carrying a bouquet on her wedding day came from? It was because in the 1500’s people got married in June. They chose June because they took their annual bath in May, so they still smelt pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell a […]
In the middle of a war the opposing sides climb out of their trenches and play football!
World War I or “The Great War”, as it became known, began in August 1914. On the Western Front both sides quickly reached a stalemate. Young soldiers from both Britain and Germany huddled in freezing, muddy trenches, shells and bullets exploding around them, caught in one of the most futile and bloody conflicts of the […]
The remarkable story of a violin
Would you believe that a violin sold at auction for $1.7M or if it’s easier for £1.1M! It was a very special and historic violin, and one that was found in an attic in 2006. How did it get there and why was it worth £1.1M. To understand, you have to go back to April […]
The Gunpowder Plot – a fool proof plan that wasn’t!
Let’s make history fun, this was a plan that the conspirators, pictured above, thought was fool proof, unfortunately it wasn’t! The Church of Egland had been formed 80 years before, but the conspirators were not happy, they wanted to bring the Catholic religion back to England, and it was obvious to them that James 1, […]
A man looks for a cure for Malaria, but finds ….
I wonder how often does this happens, you start looking for something and find something totally different? It happened to William Perking who by mistake found the first synthetic organic dye he discovered, mauveine, a colour we now call Mauve. In 1856 William Perkin started looking for a cure for malaria. He was an 18-year-old […]