Hallowe’en
Hallowe’en, or Halloween, occurs on 31st October, which is often within the schools’ October half-term week ~ very handy for parents looking […]
Read MoreMonth: December 2018
The Globe Theatre
The Globe Theatre in London was built by Sam Wanamaker as a replica of the theatre in which Shakespeare’s plays were first […]
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The Loch Ness Monster
The Loch Ness Monster, or ‘Nessie’ as she is affectionately known, has long been a draw for tourists to the Inverness area […]
Read MoreThe Loch Ness Monster, or ‘Nessie’ as she is affectionately known, has long been a draw for tourists to the Inverness area of the Scottish Highlands. This is in spite of the only evidence for her existence being a few blurry long-distance photographs which have apparently been shown to be fakes.
Loch Ness is the UK’s largest lake by volume, being 23 miles long, a mile wide and 755 feet deep. Its sides and bottom are smooth, making it the perfect shape for the phenomenon of tidal bores and seiches, like an enormous lava wave motion machine. Some scientists say that the wind sets off the back-and-forth movement of the water, others that it is a tidal effect from the adjacent North Sea which lifts the British Isles up and down all the time.
Modern wave tanks can be used to demonstrate how these wave motions create shapes which might appear to be huge sea creatures. However, the mystery surrounding the shy, solitary creature remains and scientists continue to come up with new methods of investigation. For instance, in 1987 they methodically swept the loch with sonar and in 2018 there was a search of all DNA in the Loch. Nessie eludes them all.
(Top image of Loch Ness: David Dixon at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-NC 2.0)
The Bessemer Process
Sir Henry Bessemer (1813-98), born in Hertfordshire and mainly self-educated, gave his name to the Bessemer steel process and the Bessemer converter, […]
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The concrete cows of Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, England, was designated as a ‘New Town’ in 1967. Among the projects that this inspired was the 1978 […]
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Downing Street
Downing Street, in Westminster, is very close to the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace and New Scotland Yard. The original houses are […]
Read MoreDowning Street, in Westminster, is very close to the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace and New Scotland Yard. The original houses are centuries old and most have been demolished, but the remaining ones are:-
- 9 ~ the Chief Whip’s office and the Brexit department
- 10 ~ the Prime Minister’s residence, office and reception rooms (commonly known as “number ten”)
- 11 ~ the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s residence
- 12 ~ the Chief Whip’s residence and the Press Office
These houses are all connected and there is a very grand ‘extension’ and garden at the back, where the Prime Minister holds receptions and banquets. There are around a hundred rooms in total. The Prime Minister and his/her family live on the third floor and this has been the case since 1902; although it has been available since 1735, not all Prime Ministers had chosen to live there.
The famous front door is now reinforced with a metal back, making it bomb-proof.
(Top image: RachelH_ at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0)
Nursery rhymes
Traditional nursery rhymes such as ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill’, ‘Three blind mice’, and ‘Mary Mary quite contrary’ are examples […]
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The BRIT Awards
The BRIT Awards were first devised for the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee (25 years on the throne) by the Britannia […]
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Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) is a step towards the idea of having ‘open’ government. It allows anyone, whether resident […]
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Guy Fawkes Night
The 5th November is known as Guy Fawkes Night, or Bonfire Night, as it commemorates a treasonous event that took place on […]
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Jehovah’s Witnesses
There are 135,000 Jehovah’s Witneses in the UK and most people will have encountered at least two of them, as they are […]
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Brian Blessed
A force of nature, Yorkshireman Brian Blessed (1936-) is an actor on stage and screen, a voiceover artist and narrator, and, if […]
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