TIMELINE
Sir Thomas Lipton
Sir Thomas Lipton, the very embodiment of the cliche, ‘Poor boy makes good’, was born in 1850 of working class Northern Irish parents in Glasgow. Lipton started work as n errand boy and became a millionaire through the vast chain of grocers shops that he had created and by 1908 he was one of the…
Read MoreStale Bread Act 1801
What did the act say? This was an Act imposed at a time of panicked desperation by a British Government trying to keep the lid on an explosive and fed up population. The bread shortage of the previous five years had not abated and so the Government, in its wisdom decided that the population would…
Read MoreThe Khaki Election
The Khaki Election of 1900 In Britain any election called as a result of war either pre , during or post, is called a Khaki Election and there have been a number of these in the C20th. The Khaki election of 1900 was really a turning point in Britain for many reasons. Within the year…
Read MoreThe Anatomical Theatre of the Archiginnasio
The Anatomical Theatre of the Archiginnasio can be found in Europe’s oldest university, Bologna University in Italy which was founded in the C11th. The building that houses it, the Palace Archiginnasio, used to house the medical school and is a stunningly decorated building with a wonderful collection of wall memorials. The purpose of this visit…
Read MoreHyde Park Riot 1866
There is nothing new in Governments facing opposition to the passage of bills over which there has been much heated debate. During the 1860’s and following on the heals of the Chartists, there emerged in 1864, a Reform League. The Reform League wanted fundamental changes to the voting rights of ordinary working class men and…
Read MoreTransatlantic Wireless
Transatlantic wireless from Cornwall to Newfoundland. From Poldhu in Cornwall UK to Signal Hill in Newfoundland the first wireless messages across 3,000 miles of ocean were transmitted in 1901. The person behind this amazing achievement was an Italian, Guglielmo Marconi whose early experiments in Bologna and Rome had been followed by further research in Britain.…
Read MoreLaw Code of King Cnut
When King Cnut came to rule England in 1016 it was a place torn apart by successive Danish invasions and rival would be kings. It was important that if Cnut was going to be successful he would have to resort to some very harsh measures to quell his rivals. This he did by having the…
Read MoreMathematical Society Spitalfields.
Like many of the ‘societies’ of its time the Mathematical Society of Spitalfields, founded in 1717, was run as a club where people of like minded interests could meet, discuss and debate the latest news, views and ideas of their chosen interest, in this case mathematics with a bit of physics thrown in for good…
Read MoreOctavia Hill
Octavia Hill, social reformer and one of the founders of the National Trust. Octavia Hill was born in 1838 into a family of social reformers, her grandfather was Thomas Southwood Smith a public health reformer and her father was a friend of Jeremy Bentham so from an early age she was exposed to the need…
Read MoreAnne Boleyn’s Execution Speech
When in 1532 Anne Boleyn finally gave in and slept with King Henry VIII and then in 1533 secretly married him, she as good as sealed her own death warrant. She was the first English Queen to be executed and her execution speech is a paradox of the journey which brought her to the block.…
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