In early 1914, having learned to fly only because doctor’s orders stopped him working on the family farm after a sheep kicked him in the ribs, Louis Strange joined the “Upside Down” club, for a feat
too obvious to spell out but must have been hairy in an open cockpit.
His innovative streak continued in the war that soon broke out, building petrol bombs with his pals and dropping the homemade explosives from the cockpit by hand to good effect.
It is often said with some force that the only good Nazi is a Grammar Nazi. Those guilty of grammatical errors and typographical solecisms, especially online, may seem – and this will shock you – ungrateful when their mistake is pointed out,
but plainly providing such helpful feedback is God’s work.
Thus it is with a divided mind that your correspondent relays the story of The Good Typo. For which, hat tip @BlueEarthMngmnt.
The Samnites were old rivals of Rome, and did pretty well for a while before they went the way of the rest of Rome’s enemies for the centuries of their pomp - defeat, assimilation, obliteration.
This is a story of their success, which was also their failure - with not one but two lessons.
The Samnites were commanded in 321 BC by Gaius Pontius, who learned that the Roman army in the field against him was presently to be found at Calatia.
Dec 27, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I hesitated - but not for long - before flagging this important thread, given the hostility around this topic.
The point is that when those in power suppress free speech, they never do so saying “we are suppressing free speech.”
Philip Wareing was 25 years old when his Spitfire exploded.
Flying out of Kenley Aerodrome, at that time in August 1940 mostly a smoking ruin at which the pilots slept under the wings of their planes,
Sergeant Wareing was one of seven British airmen engaging thirty German ME109s in the air over the Channel and – as the combat drifted southwards – above Calais.
Aug 13, 2022 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
#Deanehistory 162. This is the story of the 99 call made during the British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa in 1974. if you dislike sporting stories, or robust collective self-defence, don’t read this one, and write a robust letter of complaint to the NATO alliance.
The Lions team is a combined squad of English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish players. Periodically this handpicked group tours another rugby playing nation.
Lord Arthur Hill was a British soldier, devoted to the Duke of Wellington. Wellington valued his services in return, but had a lot on his plate preparing to fight Napoleon & seemingly forgot to put Arthur’s name to the team sheet.
Thus it was that, a mere two days before the Battle of Waterloo, Arthur received a message to come at once to the Duke's side to serve as his Aide-De-Camp. Being in London when the message reaching him, he sped immediately to Dover.
Aug 9, 2022 • 32 tweets • 5 min read
I had a discussion about asylum seekers coming to the UK on GB News earlier this evening. As many will not have seen it, and for those who’ve asked what I said, here it is.🧵
(I am not tagging in those with whom I debated, mindful of how such discussions can go online. I have decided to post this; they haven’t. But I will make it clear to them that I of course welcome discussion – IF they want to.)
Aug 9, 2022 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
#Deanehistory 157. The Lost Gardens of Heligan. Hat tip SH.
Heligan was the country seat of the Trelawnys for four hundred years.
Buying the Heligan estate outside Mevagissey in Cornwall in the 16th century, they built a new manor house;
rebuilt in 1692, although handsome, it is not what we are interested in today.
September, 1956. Thomas Fizpatrick, a veteran of both the Second World War and the Korean War, is getting legless with some kindred spirits in a bar on St Nicholas Avenue, in the area in which he’d grown up, Washington Heights, Upper Manhattan,
in the hazy period well known to nighthawks that sits somewhere indefinable between late night and early morning.
I, he boasted, could go to New Jersey & get back here in 15 minutes. I could go get a plane & fly it right to this bar if I wanted to.
Aug 8, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
On the small off chance that you weren't glued to your TV set this morning for our @GMB debate about whether MPs should have holidays, here's the thrust of what I said.
What’s the goal here - a set of dedicated public servants so tired they can’t lift their arms?
It's maintained that we are in a crisis and therefore nobody can take leave. But consider the past three years and what forecasters say is coming. That's an argument for them never taking a break. There's never a good time.
On Christmas Eve 1971, Juliane Koepcke boarded LANSA Flight 508 with her mother. She was seventeen.
The flight was from Peru’s capital, Lima, to Pucallpa, a city in the east of the country – they were going to see Julian’s father, a zoologist who worked in the Amazonian Rainforest at Panguana, a research station he had established.
Aug 5, 2022 • 34 tweets • 8 min read
#deanehistory 154. The mad – and successful – adventures of Geoffrey Spicer-Simson.
Most of the stories I tell on the @HistoryHrPod#podcast with @denvercunning are from the #deanehistory tweets & book. Today, courtesy of @WillardFoxton, this story is from the podcast.
Geoffrey Simson was born in Tasmania and took his wife’s name to become Spicer-Simson before embarking on a magnificently lunatic military career. Which had a rather bad start.
Aug 4, 2022 • 24 tweets • 5 min read
#Deanehistory 153. Hat tip: @HCH_Hill. "The Unluckiest Ship in History..?" or... "Don't shoot! We're Republicans!"
The USS William D. Porter was named after US Civil War Commodore William Porter, who had nothing to deserve this association being inflicted upon his memory.
Her launch in 1943 was just about the only thing that went right for the Willie Dee, as her crew called her; she was perhaps the unluckiest ship in history, for the following reasons.
Why are carrots orange?
This will likely seem a strange question to you, since – from Bugs Bunny snacking on them in your childhood cartoons, to what hits your plate when you’ve been naughty – you are so accustomed to them being orange that you don’t really think of them another way.
The great generation of men who had fought the First World War returned to challenging prospects in Australia. Many veterans were gifted parcels of land to farm, especially in Western Australia - but times were
hard and the Great Depression of 1929 made things worse.
That said, the worst enemy of all for the farmers wasn’t the economy. It was the emu.
This great galumphing flightless bird can go for weeks without eating. But it really prefers not to.
Today, in Flanders fields the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row. Over a hundred years ago, during the First World War, things were very different.
Private Percy Buck of the Hertfordshire Regiment was 26 when he was joined the great fallen in 1917, killed on the battlefield at the Third Battle of Ypres.
Columbo is the best TV detective. This is unarguable. But what may be unknown about our favourite rumpled sleuth is that he was also the cause of, and solution too, one of the biggest problems faced by the Romanian government.
In the 1970s, few American television programmes were broadcast behind the Iron Curtain. Columbo, with its strong, frequent anti-elitist narratives, a humble servant of justice and the state proving the undoing of evil capitalist wealthy toffs, was an exception.
Whilst I was not a barrister of any distinction, Bar School can teach some things that are useful in life (even if, admittedly, not always heeded), like when to shut up.
A particular fear of an advocate is going “one question too far.” You’ve got what you need, you’ve landed some doubt – take it & move on. Don’t, no matter how good that “one more thing” might seem to be, give in to temptation & ask a question to which you don’t know the answer…
Rick Jolly was born in Hong Kong, into a family that knew both conflict and cure. His Polish father had been a prisoner of war held by the Japanese for five years. His mother was an ambulance driver.
It is easy to read things as predetermined when they are not. Some are born into great fortune and squander it; some are born into families of lovingkindness and become monsters.
Back in the covidian days of 2021, we told the story of mini-submarines used against the Tirpitz in Operation Source (deanehistory 74).
Here is the story of a precursor, related action: Operation Chariot, the story of the St. Nazaire Raid in 1942.
HMS Campbeltown was previously USS Buchanan, one of fifty “Town Class” ships transferred to the Royal Navy by the Americans under the Destroyers for Bases Agreement in 1940, a deal that did what it says on the tin.
