QI

G is for James Graham

Wednesday, 27 February 2013

This is my contribution to Round Twelve of ABC Wednesday and again I am focusing on people, some famous, some infamous and some half-forgotten. Many dismiss James Graham as just another 18th century quack, while others believe he was the world’s first sex therapist. But whatever your view, there can be no denying that he had a genuine genius for the grand gesture. Born in Edinburgh in 1745, the son of a saddler, Graham trained in medicine, but left medical school without taking his degree and set up as an [...]

8 comments Read on ›››

F is for Richard Feynman

Wednesday, 20 February 2013

This is my contribution to Round Twelve of ABC Wednesday and again I am focusing on people, some famous, some infamous and some half-forgotten. Not only was Richard Feynman one of the most famous physicists of the 20th century, he was also someone who believed that life should be fun and lived to the full. His last words probably sum him up best: ‘I’d hate to die twice. It’s so boring’. Feynman was born in New York in 1918, the son of a Jewish Byelorussian car polish salesman. There was [...]

6 comments Read on ›››

E is for Anthony Ettricke

Wednesday, 13 February 2013

This is my contribution to Round Twelve of ABC Wednesday and again I am focusing on people, some famous, some infamous and some half-forgotten. This post is as much about a place as a person and the letter E takes me to Wimborne Minster in Dorset and the rather eccentric Anthony Ettricke. Ettricke was a 17th century barrister who was called to the bar in 1652 and from 1662 to 1682 served as the Recorder and Magistrate of Poole and Wimborne. His sole claim to fame in law was to [...]

3 comments Read on ›››

D is for Bertrand Dawson

Wednesday, 6 February 2013

This is my contribution to Round Twelve of ABC Wednesday and again I am focusing on people, some famous, some infamous and some half-forgotten. Bertrand Dawson was a renowned physician, a peer of the realm, a pioneer the National Health Service and also the last person to commit regicide in the UK, or at least the last that we know of. Dawson was born in Croydon in 1864, the son of an architect, and graduated with a medical degree from the Royal London Hospital in 1893. In 1907, Dawson joined [...]

8 comments Read on ›››

A is for Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov

Wednesday, 16 January 2013

This is my contribution to Round Twelve of ABC Wednesday and again I am focusing on people, some famous, some infamous and some half-forgotten. The name Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov may not mean much to you, but you have a lot to thank him for because he has also been called the man who saved the world. Arkhipov was born to a peasant family near Moscow in 1926. He was educated at the Pacific Higher Naval School and served on board a minesweeper in the war with Japan in 1945. He [...]

11 comments Read on ›››

W is for Prof Dick Willoughby

Wednesday, 19 December 2012

This is my contribution to Round Eleven of ABC Wednesday and again I am focusing on people, some famous, some infamous and some half-forgotten. The Alaskan mining prospector ‘Professor’ Dick Willoughby was looking out across the Muir Glacier in June 1888 when he caught a glimpse of a most remarkable sight – the outline of a modern city skyline looming out of the misty horizon. Although the mirage lasted only a few minutes, he was able to photograph it to prove that he had indeed seen it. Willoughby speculated that [...]

9 comments Read on ›››

S is for P. T. Selbit

Wednesday, 21 November 2012

This is my contribution to Round Eleven of ABC Wednesday and again I am focusing on people, some famous, some infamous and some half-forgotten. P. T. Selbit is hardly a household name and yet he was responsible for creating one of the great magical illusions that we are all familiar with – sawing a woman in half. Selbit was born Percy Thomas Tibbles in Hampstead, London, in 1881. He was to take his stage name by reversing his surname, subtracting one of the Bs, but that was to come much [...]

7 comments Read on ›››

R is for Rebecca Rolfe

Wednesday, 14 November 2012

This is my contribution to Round Eleven of ABC Wednesday and again I am focusing on people, some famous, some infamous and some half-forgotten. You may not recognise the name Rebecca Rolfe, but she is a major figure in American folklore, became an animated star for Disney and was the first American to be buried in England. You will know her better by her original name – Pocahontas. She was born near what is now Richmond, Virginia, the daughter of the supreme chief of the Powhatan Confederacy, an alliance of [...]

13 comments Read on ›››

N is for Horatio Nelson

Wednesday, 18 April 2012

This is my contribution to ABC Wednesday and for Round Ten I am focusing on people from the past, some famous, others less so. Rear Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson is a great national naval hero, at least in the UK, probably less so in France, but famous though he is, many of the things we think we know about him are wrong. Where to begin? Well he didn’t hold a telescope to his blind eye at the Battle of Copenhagen and say: ‘I see no ships’ as is often quoted. [...]

6 comments Read on ›››