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Tom Whipple Profile picture
@whippletom
Apr 27, 2018 • 14 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
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Two days ago the obituaries editor came round and asked if I would like to write about someone who had done something important to do with platelets.

With an inward sigh, I said yes. I prepared to write the worthy-but-dull obituary of Gustav Born.
1/n
How did he become interested in platelets, I thought? Maybe I can eke an anecdote out of that.
Anything of interest in his parentage to bulk things out?
Einstein??! How on earth did they know Einstein?
Any drama in his youth? (1)
Any drama in his youth? (2)
Any other unlikely connections in his life?
I suppose that’s the end of the famous people though.
His poor children. How do you follow that?
Right, I’m unsurprisable.
Anything you left out because it just got a bit ludicrous?

Well, he’s also related to Ben Elton and some chap called Martin Luther.
Oh, and he worked out how blood clots work and so saved hundreds of thousands of lives of people at risk of heart attack and stroke./END
thetimes.co.uk/edition/regist…
Since this is going viral, here's a link for information about platelet donation:
platelets.blood.co.uk
Pps: anyone can read the full obituary for free by registering. thetimes.co.uk/edition/regist…

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More from @whippletom

Tom Whipple Profile picture
Jul 20
This is the tale of a little frog who could. That frog's name was Rosie the Ribeter. And she could jump over 2 metres. And the problem was, according to science, she shouldn't have. In a minor way, Rosie changed science. In a major way, she showed what svcience was about.

1/x Image
The world's professors had reached agreement on how far a bullfrog could jump. It was a little over 1m.

They reached this conclusion by scaring frogs, then seeing how far they jumped.

They did this because they studied muscles, and frogs were a model organism for muscles. Image
No one told this to Rosie.

One day, Professor Tom Roberts was reading the Guinness Book of Records and he came across Rosie.

As a biomechanician he scared frogs all day (basically). He knew how they jumped. He knew Rosie must be faking it. But he looked further.
Read 12 tweets
Tom Whipple Profile picture
Dec 29, 2024
President Carter's greatest legacy could well have come after his presidency.

When he left office, he decided to eradicate a disease. In the 1980s, millions of people a year were infected with guinea worm - a horrible parasite. 1/x Image
You get infected from drinking contaminated water, the parasite grows inside you, then emerges - a metre long. It is horribly painful and debilitating.

Carter first saw a guinea worm on a trip to Africa, post-presidency...
“We were in a clearing in the jungle … and I saw a pretty young woman standing there holding a baby in her right arm.” He went to ask its name.

"It was not a baby but her right breast, which was more than a foot long, and it had a Guinea worm emerging from the nipple”
Read 8 tweets
Tom Whipple Profile picture
Jul 23, 2024
I am now going to begin a periodic thread of castles on rightmove I would like to buy that I consider underpriced. I reserve the right to include non-castles if they, say, have their own chapel with frescoes, or several suits of armour. 1/
11th Century "farmhouse" with "small church"

£900k

rightmove.co.uk/properties/147…
Image
Paduan castle. Benefits from access to golf courses, and reasonable views.

£830k
rightmove.co.uk/properties/145…
Image
Read 17 tweets
Tom Whipple Profile picture
Jun 27, 2024
This is the story of one of the greatest intelligence coups in history. It begins in the lobby of the Hotel Bristol in Oslo, one wintry night in 1939.

A middle aged man went to reception and asked, could he borrow a typewriter? 🧵

amazon.co.uk/Battle-Beams-s…
Image
The man was Hans Ferdinand Mayer, a German businessman with the sort of boringly-corporate job that rarely invited further questions. He had arranged his work trip here, in the months before the invasion of Norway, especially.

He put on gloves, went upstairs, and began to type. Image
It seems unlikely that any of those in the lobby that night noticed him. Less likely still that they realised they had witnessed perhaps the most significant act of treachery of the war.

Mayer was head of the Siemens research laboratory, and he hated the Nazis. Image
Read 24 tweets
Tom Whipple Profile picture
Jun 22, 2024
On the longest night of the year, I'm thinking of a mad Dane called Thomas Sneum, 83 years ago, 1,000ft up above the North Sea, climbing out onto the wing of his antique biplane.

In a war notable for daring escapes, his strikes me as among the most daring - and consequential 1/ Image
Sneum was a Danish air force pilot. And he was not a sensible man.

When war broke out, he ran to his plane and was furious to find Denmark had surrendered. His plane, a biplane, had already been disabled.

This saved his life - it was no match for an Me109. But he was cross Image
His first scheme was to kill Himmler with a longbow. He spent days practicing shooting birds out of the sky in preparation for a visit by the SS chief.

But the visit was cancelled. Image
Read 19 tweets
Tom Whipple Profile picture
Jun 6, 2024
80 years ago, a great armada left Britain for France. In the sky, swarms of planes took off in the gloaming, bound for the Reich.

Both were the result of months of planning, carrying technology years in development.

And they're not what you are thinking of. 1/x Image
The boats weren't going to Normandy. The planes were not dropping paratroopers behind the beaches. In fact, they were dropping scarecrows.

Churchill famously said "In wartime, truth should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies"

This was the final bodyguard. Image
Over the preceding months, 1,668 sorties had been launched against coastal radar. The cost had been eye-watering, and the bravery humbling. On one occasion, a doomed plane rammed the radar: Image
Read 12 tweets

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