New Year, new board, new topic. The title says it all, anything to do with history could be what your rellies did, inventions that made work, easier, faster or put some out of work. Usual rules for this sort of thing apply.

1. Your first word has to be the last from the previous post.

2. Can be more than one word if it's a name or phrase, i.e. Alfred the Great. The Great War.

3. You can only end in numerals if it's a date

I'll start off:

The Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Opened in November 1869 after 10 years of construction work, it allows water transportation between Europe and Asia without the need to navigate around Africa.

The canal is single lane with passing places in Ballah By-Pass and in the Great Bitter Lake. It contains no locks; seawater flows freely through the canal. In general, the canal north of the Bitter Lakes flows north in winter and south in summer. The current south of the lakes changes with the tide at Suez.

Nice one, normanhurst!

Suez has been a bittersweet word in British history, from when Disraeli conned his way into acquiring a British controlling interest to when his successor, Anthony Eden, saw his own and Britain's credibility as major players in world politics receive a blow from which the country has never recovered, according to many. How different things might have been in 1956 if Churchill had been still prime minister. His reaction when Eden unilaterally declared a ceasefire and withdrew British troops? "I cannot understand why our troops were halted. To go so far and not go on was madness."

The Madness of King George is a 1994 film directed by Nicholas Hytner. It tells the true story of George III's deteriorating mental health. Historical analysis of George III's life has gone through a "kaleidoscope of changing views" that have depended heavily on the prejudices of his biographers and the sources available to them. Until re-assessment in the later half of the twentieth century, his reputation in America was one of a tyrant and in Britain he became "the scapegoat for the failure of imperialism". He is often remembered as "The Mad King" and "The King Who Lost America".

AMERICA - now who was really responsible for naming this place? Was it Amerigo Vespucci, or did America become America because of the friendship between a salt-merchant from Bristol, Richard Amerike, and John Cabot? Amerike - whose name should actually be written Richard ap Meryk - came from a family of wealthy WELSHMEN.

The Welshmen of Tirawley

Scorney Bwee, the Barretts' bailiff, lewd and lame,
To lift the Lynott's taxes when he came,
Rudely drew a young maid to him;
Then the Lynotts rose and slew him,
And in Tubber-na-Scorney threw him--
Small your blame,
Sons of Lynott!
Sing the vengeance of the Welshmen of Tirawley.

Tirawley, the huge barony stretching from Logh Conn to Killala Bay in the county of Mayo, Ireland, can rightly claim to be the last British soil claimed in the name of France. However when General Humbert commandeered its main town, Ballina, as the launching point for his supportive invasion of the country during the great rebellion of 1798, it was not to be long before he learnt his error in judgement. "I have men who speak erse, I have men who speak English. I even have men who can master the Connaught dialect. But none of us can fathom the grunts of these people. They could be our greatest allies or our worst foes, but in the absence of intelligence to either effect we might as well have thrown our lot in with the local cattle".

Cattle raiding is the act of stealing cattle.

In Australia, such stealing is often referred to as duffing, and the person as a duffer. In North America, especially in cowboy culture, cattle theft is dubbed rustling and an individual who engages in it is a rustler.

Historically, the act of cattle rustling is quite ancient, with the first suspected raids conducted over seven thousand years ago.

Cattle raids play an important part in Indo-European mythology; see for example Táin Bó Cúailnge (Irish), the Rigvedic Panis (India), and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, who steals the cattle of Apollo (Greece).

These myths are often paired with myths of the abduction of women (compare Helen, Sita, Saranyu, The Rape of the Sabine Women). Abduction of women and theft of livestock were practiced in many of the world's preurbanised cultures, the former likely reaching back to the Paleolithic, and the latter to the earliest domestication of animals in the Neolithic.

Neolithic peoples in the Levant, Anatolia, Syria, northern Mesopotamia and Central Asia were also accomplished builders, utilizing mud-brick to construct houses and villages. At Çatal höyük, houses were plastered and painted with elaborate scenes of humans and animals. In Europe, long houses built from wattle and daub were constructed. Elaborate tombs were built for the dead. These tombs are particularly numerous in Ireland, where there are many thousand still in existence. Neolithic people in the British Isles built long barrows and chamber tombs for their dead and causewayed camps, henges, flint mines and cursus monuments. It was also important to figure out ways of preserving food for future months, such as fashioning relatively airtight containers, and using substances like salt as preservatives.

Preservatives employed throughout history to keep dead bodies from decaying have been as diverse as natron, navy-ration rum and urine.

Urine was so important in the preparation of wool, being used to remove impurities, that in Roman times it was taxed. The urine was poured into vats and the cloth was trampled into it by the feet of slaves.

Slaves… somebody who is forced to work for somebody else for no payment and is regarded as the property of that person Slavery is the system under which those people are treated as property to be bought and sold.

Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation. Historically, slavery was institutionally recognized by many societies; in more recent times slavery has been outlawed in most societies but continues through the practices of debt bondage, indentured servitude, serfdom, domestic servants kept in captivity, certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves, child soldiers, and forced marriage.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution? Groucho Marx

Marx would have been proud of New Labour - Tony (pants on fire) Blair

BLAIR Athol is the seat of the Duke of Athol. The only person in Britain allowed a private ARMY

Army in the broadest sense, is the land-based military of a nation or state. It may also include other branches of the military such as the air force via means of aviation corps. Within a national military force, the word army may also mean a field army an army composed of full-time career soldiers who 'stand over', in other words, who do not disband during times of peace. They differ from army reserves who are activated only during such times as war or natural disasters

Was that historical or just a dickdef?

Oops I dunno what happened there… I’d included a piece about the new model army… something went wrong with copy and paste… carry on.

Army in the broadest sense, is the land-based military of a nation or state. The New Model Army was created in February 1645 by Parliament as it felt that a professional army would be more successful against the king’s army. It was a military unit that was to transform the English Civil War. The Battle of Marston Moor, had been a major victory for Parliament but not totally decisive in the sense that Charles could recover from it.

It may also include other branches of the military such as the air force via means of aviation corps. Within a national military force, the word army may also mean a field army an army composed of full-time career soldiers who 'stand over', in other words, who do not disband during times of peace. They differ from army reserves who are activated only during such times as war or natural disasters

I'm going to bar pasting on this thread and force everyone to be honest!

What about getting a pasting in the bar? Is that not allowed either?

I'm going to make getting pasted in the bar compulsory!

Anyway - back to the sticks:

Disasters come in many forms, from comically inevitable to inevitably comic, if one takes comic to mean as Dante intended, But even Dante would have struggled to find a compartment in hell for that unrecognised champion of the petroleum industry and the biggest global disaster of the last fifteen years (Japanese sunamis included), George W Bush.

Pasting in the bar is discouraged as it interferes with the process of getting plastered.

Bush began producing television sets for the British market in 1950 with a 9" bakelite model with an optional screen magnifier. The 1953 14" mahogany console was an imposing and expensive piece of furniture.

Furniture in Anglo-Saxon English houses consisted of four basic elements, the stol, the tavel, the bedd and the gangpytt.

the gangpytt was the equivalent of the earth closet still to be found in many rural areas a century ago, although by that date it was vanishing from urban areas because of the organised collection by nightsoil men of human faeces

Faeces were adopted by Mussolini as ............. - hang on, that's not right.

Faeces when fossilised are called coprolites and their analysis can provide important evidence of concurrent flora and fauna.

Fauna in ancient Roman religion, is a goddess said in differing ancient sources to be the wife, sister, or daughter of Faunus. Varro regarded her as the female counterpart of Faunus, and said that the fauni all had prophetic powers.

Powers whiskey distillery in Dublin was reputedly one of the very first to bottle their product. Prior to that most whiskey was sold in the cask. The rumour that Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards is responsible for ninety percent of the pre-tax revenue of the Irish Distillers Group is not true; they are now called the Pernod Group.

Group dynamics over the internet can be frought with problems. I just missed tagging onto NormanHurst's 'power' thanks to Nordmann's intervention before me. Still, just managed to pull the fat out of the fire!

Powers of ten are called logarithms which were first invented by the Scotsman Sir John Napier in the 16^th century. Any number can be expressed or written as 10 to some power, e.g. 100 = 10^2. Napier had an interest in the occult and was considered by the people of Edinburgh to have supernatural powers. He once used his cock (!) to unmask a thief who had been pilfering from him. He put lampblack on the bird and placed it in a room on its own. He ordered all his servants, one by one, to enter the room and stroke the bird telling them that by this process the cock would be able afterwards to tell him who the thief was. All those who were innocent would do as they were told and emerge with dirty hands but the thief would not touch the bird. To confirm the identification Napier spied on each servant as they passed through the room. And the moral of the story is that by your own guilt you are condemned.

Oops sorry ...

Condemned to die by hanging, the two pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read were spared by virtue of their pregnancies, though not quite in the way the authorities had intended. The gallows still awaited them once they gave birth. Mary however cheated the gallows by dying in childbirth. Ann simply disappeared from history. Some say she escaped. Some say she hanged herself. Most speculate that her father, remorseful for having disowned her in her youth, ransomed her and smuggled her back to the USA where she died of old age, a wealthy plantation owner.

Some of yours are very hairy, Mr Hurst!

Fond and long gone memories Mr Nord, I sit and reminisce the times when I had hair… but I’m losing it. Sadly now I’ve lost another one I can’t even plait it, which presents a problem, now I’m down to just the two up there do I comb it two to the left, two to the right or one each side… twas ok in the past when I was indecisive but now… I just can’t make up my mind.

I suppose a solution would be to say sod it, dispense with the harmony hairspray and carry on with ‘pledge’ and a quick buff up with a soft cloth.

Who was it who said that, 'dying is the last thing I intend to do'?



Oops, sorry if I'm breaking rules.