The Man Who Transformed a Welsh Town Into a ‘Kingdom’ of Used Books.
The historic Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye was once a sleepy shire, home to a few hundred people who by and large made their living farming...
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After Slavery In America, Loved Ones Were Found In Wanted Ads
In the waning years of the Civil War, advertisements like this began appearing in newspapers around the country: "INFORMATION WANTED By a...
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How John Peel Created Our Musical World
It was 27 July 2012, the night of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. The Queen got into a helicopter. Men with top hats walked on...
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Almost Every Bob Ross Painting in Existence Lives in an Office in Virginia
SOMEWHERE OFF ROUTE 50 IN Herndon, Virginia, next to a LabCorp and across the street from a dentist’s office, there is a warehouse that...
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When Dylan Met The Beatles
On Friday 28 August 1964, in a room in the Delmonico hotel at Park Avenue and 59th in New York City – at a rendezvous brokered with a...
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The Remarkable Story of a Woman Who Preserved Over 30 Years of TV History
ABOUT 71,000 VHS AND BETAMAX cassettes are sitting in boxes, stacked 50-to-a-pallet in the Internet Archive’s physical storage facility...
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The Shortest War in History (38 Minutes)
The little known Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896 is generally considered to be the shortest war in history, lasting for a grand total of 38 ...
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Recoil In Horror At The Story Of The Man Who Cut Out His Own Appendix
During an expedition to the Antarctic, Russian surgeon Leonid Rogozov became seriously ill. He needed an operation - and as the only...
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Naked Cooks, Excrement, Rats: The Secretly Disgusting History of Royal Palaces
In July of 1535, King Henry VIII and his court of over 700 people embarked on an epic official tour. Over the next four months the...
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Lucille Bogan's Shave 'Em Dry - The Song From 1935 that's So Filthy It Comes With A Parental Warning
Every generation thinks the one that preceded them was square, and there's this general idea that the pre-1960s world was totally sexless...
5,833 views
Say Hello to “White Death” Simo Häyhä Became The Deadliest Sniper In History
At the dawn of World War II in 1939, Josef Stalin sent over half a million men across Russia’s western border to invade Finland. It was...
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How Phil Lynott Became Rock's Most Notorious Hellraiser
Phil Lynott was recording his second solo album in a studio in Soho and, as usual, the control room was overflowing with hangers-on....
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Led Zeppelin In India: The True Story Behind The Secret Bombay Sessions
In October 1972, Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page travelled to Bombay to jam with Indian musicians. This is what happened…...
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Deconstructing Led Zeppelin’s ‘Ramble On’ Track by Track: Guitars, Bass, Drums & Vocals
I'm seriously addicted to deconstructing well known songs, I've no idea why. I think it stems from playing around with the mixing levels...
1,080 views
Meet Ginger Baker, The Most Terrifying Man in Music
In the opening scenes of a documentary about his life, Ginger Baker breaks the film maker’s nose with his walking stick. The film’s...
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Louis Daguerre, Inventor of Daguerreotype Photography
The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process (1839-1860) in the history of photography. Named after the...
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George Harrison said he wanted to see 'Life of Brian' - so he handed us the money
From the Michael Palin interview with Cahal Milmo in 2001 George Harrison was the man who saved Life of Brian for the simplest of...
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Muddy Waters and Sister Rosetta Tharpe's 'mind-blowing' station show
On 7 May 1964, a gaggle of excited passengers alighted on to a rainy disused railway station platform in south Manchester and took their...
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'In The Event Of Moon Disaster' The Speech Nixon Prepared If The Moon Landing Failed
On July 18 of 1969, speechwriter William Safire (December 17, 1929 – September 27, 2009) wrote what would have been the White House’s...
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The Sad Story Of John Pemberton — The Man Who Invented Coca-Cola
If John Pemberton was never in the American Civil War, he would never have become addicted to morphine and we wouldn't have Coca-Cola....
1,428 views
The Debut Of The Ramones At CBGB's
The Ramones and CBGB. Has there ever been a better match of artist and venue? Okay, the Beatles had the Cavern Club and James Brown had...
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The Story of Bluesman Robert Johnson’s Famous Deal With the Devil Retold in Three Animations
So many hugely successful and talented musicians have died at age 27 that it almost seems reasonable to believe the number represents...
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T.E Lawrence, Was He Just 'The Dynamite Guy'?
The legacy of T E Lawrence, the British intelligence officer who fought alongside Arab irregulars and was immortalised in David Lean's ...
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The Story Behind “The ’68 Comeback Special”
Elvis' finest moment isn’t his first Sun recording, 1954’s “That’s All Right,” or his 1956 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, although...
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