August - 2019

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 sheep. But then came Richard Booth, a bombastic, outrageous figure who decided to fill the town with hundreds of thousands of used books. Booth, who died on August 20 at the age of 80, according to Sam Roberts of the New York Times, helped transform Hay-on-Wye into a literary hub and a tourism magnet. Today, the town’s famous Festival of Liter

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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 mother concerning her children. "Mrs. Elizabeth Williams, who now resides in Marysville, California was formerly owned to-gether with her children, vis: Lydia, William, Allen, and Parker, by one John Petty, who lived about six miles from the town of Woodbury, Franklin County, Tenneesee. At that time she was the the wife of Sandy Rucker, and

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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 Glastonbury Tor. The Queen jumped out of a helicopter. Danny Boyle’s pageant in Stratford took Britain on a journey through the centuries, from prehistoric settlements to James Bond films, and the miracle of satellite bounced it all into hundreds of millions of homes around the world. Seasoned watchers of stadium-sized spectaculars would ha

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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 houses almost every painting ever painted by one of the most recognisable painters in America: Bob Ross. They’re not on display, but are stacked carefully in numbered cardboard boxes; landscape upon landscape, snow-capped peak upon snow-capped peak, happy little tree upon happy little tree. Ross’s instructional television show, The Joy of Pai

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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 keen eye to a story by journalist, mutual friend and assiduous self-publicist Al Aronowitz – the Beatles encountered Bob Dylan for the first time. Here the folk-singing scarecrow-prophet introduced the excitable Scousers to marijuana for (allegedly) the first time. Ringo Starr, the first to be offered a smoke and ignorant of dope etiquette, chu

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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 in Richmond, California, waiting to be digitised. The tapes are not in chronological order, or really any order at all. They got a little jumbled as they were transferred. First recorded in Marion Stokes’s home in the Barclay Condominiums in Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, the tapes had been distributed among nine additional apartments sh

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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 minutes. The story begins with the signing of the Heligoland-Zanzibar treaty between Britain and Germany in 1890. This treaty effectively drew up spheres of influence between the imperial powers in East Africa; Zanzibar was ceded to British influence, whilst Germany was given control over mainland Tanzania. With this new found influence,

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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 doctor on the team, he realised he would have to do it himself. As the polar winter rolled in, 27-year-old Leonid Rogozov started to feel tired, weak and nauseous. Later, a strong pain developed down the right side of his abdomen. "Being a surgeon, he had no difficulty in diagnosing acute appendicitis," says his son, Vladislav. "It was a conditi

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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 massive entourage would visit around 30 different royal palaces, aristocratic residences and religious institutions. While these stops were important PR events for the king, designed to spark loyalty in his subjects, royal households had another reason entirely for their constant movement. They weren’t just exercising their tremendous wealth: they

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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 and uptight. There's this vision of an world where everybody wore ties and nobody made double entendres. But that couldn't be further from the truth, and our ancestors lived in a raunchy, filthy world. Granted, that raunch wasn't as on the surface as it is today, but that's part of what made it even better. There's a grand tradition of abso

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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 a move that would cost tens of thousands of lives — and it was the beginning of the legend of Simo Häyhä. For three months, the two countries fought in the Winter War, and in an unexpected turn of events, Finland — the underdog — emerged victorious. The defeat was a stunning blow to Russia. Stalin, upon invading, had believed that Finla

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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. Lynott made a show of conducting a headcount - 12 people. Gazing at the expectant entourage, he carefully prepared 12 lines of cocaine. And then he snorted them all himself. "He sat next to me and clenched the edge of the desk," says the producer, Kit Woolven. "His hands went pure white, he was holding the desk so tightly." The gesture was

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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… Lack of information has only served to amplify the mythical aspect of Led Zeppelin’s three low-key visits to India in the space of 12 months in the early 70s. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant first visited the sprawling city of Bombay on the back of their Japanese tour of September 1971. A few months later, on their way to play Australia in February

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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 at The Rolling Stones exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery These are the individual tracks from Ramble On, and hearing Bonhams drums by themselves and then Plant's vocals is phoenomenal. Enjoy! Jimmy Page's acoustic guitar: The beauty of isolated tracks is that they allow us to hear an old piece of music in a completely new way. They give us a

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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 title... Beware of Mr Baker. Hardened music writers have been discussing online whether the world’s greatest living drummer is the industry’s worst interviewee. It seems best, then, to approach his home with caution. At a modest rented house on the outskirts of a Kent market town, his young Zimbabwean wife Kudzai answers the door. Chain-smokin

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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 inventor, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, each daguerreotype is a unique image on a silvered copper plate. In contrast to photographic paper, a daguerreotype is not flexible and is rather heavy.The daguerreotype is accurate, detailed and sharp. It has a mirror-like surface and is very fragile. Since the metal plate is extremely vulnerable

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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 reasons. When I asked him why he stepped in with the money in 1978 to make our Monty Python spoof on the life of Christ, he said: "Well, I wanted to see the film." It was typical of a man who was ready to ignore all the shouts of "blasphemy" at the time and make a movie because he had enjoyed the script and thought he and others might want to have

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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 seats for what one of the city's leading music academics says was a "massively culturally significant" gig. The show at Whalley Range's Wilbraham Road station, recorded for Granada TV as the Blues and Gospel Train, saw greats including Muddy Waters and Sister Rosetta Tharpe perform. The University of Salford's Dr Chris Lee says the show "inf

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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 official response to a failed mission to the moon. The USA could get the Apollo 11 crew into space but could Michael Collins lift Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from the lunar surface and all return home safely? Safire addressed his speech, ‘In Event of Moon Disaster’, to President Nixon’s Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman. Transcript To: H. R. Ha

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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. Coca-Cola is so ubiquitous and world-famous that its easy to forget its captivating origin story — or even, that it has one worth a look in the first place. Everyone has heard the rumours it once contained cocaine, but not many people know anything about its inventor John Stith Pemberton. According to The New Georgia Encyclopedia, John Stit

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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 the Apollo Theater. But both of those equally legendary musical figures, artistically speaking, grew past those places. The Ramones might have grown bigger than CBGB – enough to fill the tiny club a couple hundred times over. But the Queens crew never grew past the bar on the Bowery. Capacity notwithstanding, the Ramones could have played

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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 some mystical coefficient of talent and tragedy. But several decades before Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, or Amy Winehouse left us too soon, Robert Johnson—the man who pioneered selling one's soul for rock and roll—died in 1938, at age 27, under mysterious and likely violent circumstances. He was already a legend, and h

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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 film, varies markedly between the West and the Middle East. Alasdair Soussi looks at the man and myth The arrival of the British-led Imperial Camel Corps into the Arab camp at Aqaba was always likely to cause friction. Despite fighting as allies against the might of the Ottoman Empire in the 1916-18 Arab campaign to drive the Turks out of

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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 both of those are pretty great. For me, Elvis’ shining moment is Elvis, his NBC Christmas special, which aired December 3rd, 1968. He was thirty-three, a new dad, and unbeknownst to all, even himself, he was at the peak of his powers. The clownish, Falstaffian Elvis persona is nowhere in sight; the overweight, druggy, ludicrously caped and ju

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