31st January

On this day in 1835 a national sport was started called Shooting the President. It is now carried out on a regular basis, providing endless work for conspiracy theorists, secret service agents, journalists, Lee Harvey Oswald lookalikes and JFK deniers.

The first round of the game featured 'Old Hickory' Andrew Jackson (you may remember Charlton Heston played him in The Buccaneer) as the target of house-painter Richard Lawrence as the assassin. Lawrence may have been a few bullets short of a murder attempt for two reasons. Firstly, his gun jammed and secondly he claimed to be the rightful king of England, which came as something of a surprise to William IV, who actually was. What Lawrence didn't know was that Jackson already carried two lead slugs in his body from duels fought over gambling debts.

Why don't they make Presidents like that any more - although having said that it would be pointless, since Charlton Heston is no longer around to play them on film!

In other news ...

Most accounts will tell you that 'mild mannered murderer' HH Crippen poisoned his wife, Belle elmore and partially dismembered her body before stashing it in the cellar of their house at 63, Hilldrop Crescent on this day in 1910. Who said so? Chief Inspector Walter Dew of Scotland Yard. On what evidence? On the say-so of the pathologist Bernard Spilsbury, who already had a God-like reputation before this case made his name.

Unfortunately, the remains in the cellar were those of a man. Oops - nice one Dr Spilsbury. That doesn't mean of course that Crippen didn't kill Belle Elmore and it might mean that he also killed the anonymous bloke in the cellar. What it does mean, however, is that there is no hard evidence that Crippen killed anybody. A posthumous pardon is long overdue and when is Belle Elmore going to come forward?

30 January

If you go to Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight, you'll find a little chapel there, dedicated to the martyrdom of King Charles I. Not many people regard him as a martyr, even though they chopped his head off outside his own palace at Whitehall 363 years ago today (Incidentally, they've changed the calendar since then so this figure may not be totally accurate). Whatever Charles was deemed to have done - ruled without parliament, raised taxes without their consent, married a Catholic wife etc etc) the trial itself was illegal, presided over by a foreign judge. The jury was not made up of Charles's peers (ie his equals - 12 other kings) and the usual rules of evidence were waived. Having supposedly caused the deaths of thousands of his countrymen in the civil war, he was replaced by Oliver Cromwell who proceeded to do exactly the same thing in Scotland and Ireland. Historians, of course, know this already - and can point to almost any regime change where the body count is actually higher afterwards than before. Try it - you'll find it is horribly difficult to find any example which disproves that statement.

In other news ...
Anton Chekov, the Russian playwright was born this day in 1860. His plays include The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard and his grandson, Pavel Chekov, went on to become the little guy with the irritating and unconvincing Russian accent under James T Kirk on the Enterprise.

29th January

Alan Ladd died 48 years ago today. Impossibly good looking, the actor had to endure endless Hollywood jokes about his height. When he was standing alongside other actors, the cameras had to be angled just so. When he was kissing his leading lady, he was on a box or she was in a trench and he needed a stepladder to mount his horse. I don't care if some or all these stories are true, he was the star of the greatest Western film ever made - Shane - and at least Ladd's death on this day ended the old chestnut. Did Alan Ladd die at the end of Shane? No, he lived on, riding into the sunset, for another eleven years!

In other news ...
On this day in 1978, Sweden banned the use of aerosol sprays on the grounds that they were destroying the ozone layer. Can I just stick my sixpennorth in here?

• There is no such thing as global warming
• If there is, it has happened throughout history and has nothing to do with man
• Since 1978 Swedes have become very smelly indeed (as opposed to parsnips, which have retained their delightful natural fragrance)

Bullet points are back on the menu, but purely by accident. Don't get used to what you may perceive as a bold new cyber-savvy Peter Maxwell because he doesn't exist! Dinosaurs-R-Us.

You will also notice that I have forborne to mention the old joke about the Swede who goes into a chemist looking for a deodorant. It is a classic, but it needs the accent to tell it well - you'll just have to imagine it.

Not heard it? Okay then - the shopkeeper says 'Bol or aresol?' And he says (still in Swedish accent) 'Neither, I want it for my armpits.' You see, I told you it had to be in the accent!

28th January

A lot of people assume that the drug culture is a late 20th century phenomenon tied in with rock and roll, easy sex and young people. As an historian I can refute that. If you had the cash, the hard stuff has been available for much longer. For instance, it is on record that on this day in 1817, the Prince Regent was stoned in St James's Park.

In other news ...
The Irish poet W B Years died today in 1939. As he himself nearly wrote in one of his best known poems, 'A terrible beauty is dead.'

This Saturday the Maxwell family is taking itself off up to London for the day. Mrs Maxwell - or Detective Inspector Carpenter-Maxwell to give her her full title - occasionally gets a hankering for the bright lights and so we head northish and a tiny bit eastish and hit the Great Wen. Nolan is becoming quite the city slicker these days and thinks nothing of hailing a taxi. The trick now is to stop him hailing a taxi without asking first; it is quite a heart stopping experience to see one's only son disappearing down Regent Street in the back of a black cab. The cabbies like him though - he's a heavy tipper.

27th January

I shouldn't mock the afflicted, but let me tell you a true tale of Seven Zed Ess. They were a lively bunch of individuals, prone to syndromes and disorders and we were doing a project on World War One. We did the trenches and the gas and tanks and in case the girls felt left out I let them do a project of their choice, but it had to be World War One related. Little Zephaniah (not his real name) chose a man who died on this day in 1989. He was Thomas Octave Sopwith. Zephaniah didn't find his middle name funny because he only had a slim grasp of music. What he found rivetting about Sopwith is not only that he designed World War One aircraft but he was also the inventor of camels and puppies.
Today, I am proud to tell you that Zephaniah is Regius Professor of History at Oxford University (not its real name).

In other news ...
It was on this day in 1868 that the journalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley found the missing explorer (who was not a journalist) Dr Livingstone. His famous greeting of 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?' had endless comic possibilities. He could have said 'No' and then where would we be? He could have said 'Yes, but you'll have to make an appointment at Reception.' In fact, he missed the moment and just said 'Aye' or something suitably Scottish.
Incidentally, Livingstone wasn't missing. He knew exactly where he was all the time.

26th January

Let me take you back to a magic time. It was January 26 1978 and technical staff at the EMI record company refused to press a disc of the Buzzcocks because they found the B side offensive. I don't know why they didn't find the A side offensive too but I was probably out of step with the music world even then. I was more your Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, Jim Reeves kind of guy. Even Cliff Richard was a little risque ...

In other news ...
If you read the blog of yesterday, you'll know that Al Capone passed away in 1947. In 1973 screen bad guy Edward G Robinson made his exit stage left as well. 'Mother of God, is this the end of Edward G Robinson?' I rather liked the way he went in Soylent Green, being quietly euthanased to Beethoven's Pastoral. He'd probably have preferred a hail of bullets but you can't have everything.

Some days in history just don't have much happening. January 26 is like one of those days from childhood when you were staying with your Granny. You know, the one you didn't see much of, the one with the moustache, the funny eye and that rather distressing smell you couldn't quite identify. It was just a day like any other, but it seemed longer and when it was over you couldn't quite understand what it was all about and what you had done in it. That day was probably 26 January.

25th January

Exactly thirty one years ago, the 'Gang of Four' came into being. No, not the Chinese counter-revolutionaries of the same name, but a rather more benign quartet - David Owen, Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins and Bill Rodgers. They broke away from the Labour Party and formed the Social Democrats, which to those of us with an historical bent sounded like something out of the German Weimar Republic back in the Twenties. They spent most of their time deciding exactly what their party should be called so that today we have that august and impressive body known as the Lib-Dems.
Well done, guys!

In other news ...
Al Capone died today in 1947. As mobsters go he was right up there with Paul Muni, Robert de Niro, Neville Brand, Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, George Raft, Tom Hanks and Johnny Depp. At the height of his power he ran a vast bootlegging empire based in Chicago and is reckoned to have earned $105 million in 1927 alone (more or less my annual teacher's salary). By the time of his death, he had nothing and had done eleven years in prison for tax evasion.
So crime doesn't pay, then. Unless you're a taxman.

24th January

On this day in 1639 the settlers in Hartford, Connecticut voted for the Fundamental Orders, a constitution which gave them the right to set up a parliament and raise their own taxes. It din't happen for a while of course because Connecticut actually belonged to the British crown. If the politicians in Britain had thought about it for a while, they wouldn't have made such a fuss. Did we really want, as part of our Empire, people who couldn't spell Hertford?

In other news ...
Wilhelm Schouten, the Dutch navigator, sailed his ship around the treacherous tip of South America 396 years ago today. It had already been sighted, but not sailed around, but the Englishman Walter Ralegh and the Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan. Schouten named it Cape Hoorn after his birthplace in Holland. Thank God he wasn't born in Wijk bij Duurstede.

23rd January

Wasn't the Cold War great? Anybody under thirty must be totally bewildered by spies coming in from the cold. They've had to create ever more unlikely baddies for James Bond to fight because the 'evil empire' is no more. Today in 1963, Kim Philby, the 'third man' disappeared in Beirut. He was the 'third man' because the 'first man' was Guy Burgess and the 'second man' was Donald Maclean (I hope you're following this because I will be asking questions later). MI5 was full of men, mostly recruited from Cambridge and often leaning to the left.
Personally, I thought Orson Welles' version of Philby was near perfect and what he could do with a zither could make your eyes water. Or have I got that wrong? These spies are very tricky people, as I am sure you know.

In other news ..
There are some things you just shouldn't promise. Especially of you can't deliver; every parent who has ever let their attention wander as Christmas approaches knows this. Sometimes broken promises are bigger than those involving a newbikeanahamsteranatigerarealtigernotatoyonelikelastyearanda ... we've all broken that one or something like it, usually inadvertently, but take as cases in point Marshal Ney, who promised to bring Napoleon back to Paris in a cage; in fact, he defected to him. Adolf Hitler promised not to invade any more countries just before he went into the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia etc etc. But the most spectacular of all was Salvador Dali, the surrealist painter. 'Geniuses don't die,' he said. 'I'm going to live forever.' Except he didn't, dying today in 1989.
Who knew?

22nd January

In his diary entry for this day in 1924, George V wrote, 'Today 23 years ago dear Grandmama [that's Queen Victoria to you and me] died. I wonder what she would have made of a Labour government.'
What indeed? She might have been quite tickled that the new Prime Minister was Ramsay MacDonald, a crofter's son from the Heelands, a part of the country she adored. On the other hand she is on record as saying that Irish terrorists should be lynched and women campaigning for the vote should be horse-whipped, so who knows?

In other news ...
Time for another 'Bloody Sunday'. This was the third or fourth given that name and it happened in St Petersburg 107 years ago. about 1000 people marched to the Winter Palace to protest to the Tsar, Nicholas II, about the appalling conditions in his country. They were led by Father Gapon who was himself a government spy. They were all unarmed and carried icons and portraits of Nicholas who they saw as their father. a panicky Guard commander ordered his troops to open fire and the blood of at least half the crowd stained the snow. The irony of all this? Nicholas wasn't even there.

21st January

On this day in 1878, James Whistler (he of the Mother) sued the art critic John Ruskin in a libel action because Ruskin accused Whistler of 'flinging a pot of paint in the public's face'. Whistler got one farthing (that is a quarter of an old penny or one nine hundred and sixtieth of a pound to you, young reader) but that's not the point. Why did anybody listen to anything Ruskin said? After all, he was astonished to find that women had pubic hair and thought that J M W Turner was a halfway decent painter. I should add here that my lovely wife is somewhat of a fan of JMWT and so if she sees this it may turn out to be my very last blog. Fortunately for me, I didn't realize her fondness for the man until she had moved in and it was too late - her Fighting Temeraire tea towel came as a bit of a shock at the time though, I don't mind telling you.

In other news ...
It was a grim day for the British army 133 years ago today when the 24th Foot was wiped out by a force of Zulu Impis at Isandlwana. This was one of the worst defeats on record of a British force and modern attempts to explain it away include a) the Zulus were cheating because they took drugs to hype them up b) the British couldn't open their ammunition boxes because they were short of screwdrivers c) the smoke from their Lee Enfield rifles blinded them. The real reason was two-fold - a) the Zulus outnumbered the British three to one and b) the British commander, Lord Chelmsford, was an idiot.
'Nuff said.

For those disappointed that my computer skills seem to be worsening, then I would remind you that the bullet points of some days ago were by way of being a fluke. A's and B's were good enough for my old grandpappy and they are good enough for me.

20th January

Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin was born 82 years ago today. He was 39 when he walked on the moon and everybody who knows him says what a great guy he is. He'll go down in history as the second man on the moon. Hence the unkind phrase 'You show me a silver medalist and I'll show you Buzz Aldrin'. Apparently, he doesn't believe in Global Warming - excellent! In my book, he's just gone from silver to pure gold.

In other news ...
Today in 1265 the first ever meeting took place in Westminster Hall of what we might loosely call Parliament. Representatives from the Lords and Commons got together on the orders of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. Was this the start of democracy? No, because 'Commons' actually meant gentry (landowners) so something like 93% of the country wasn't represented at all. Women of course didn't count. Neither did serfs.
But at least there were no outrageous claims for expenses concerning second castles or falcon houses. So de Montfort had got something right. And just a note for Chanelle of Nine Tee Why; the word is serf, not smurf, and it has absolutely nothing to do with Mel Gibson painting his face blue in Braveheart. Well done for noticing it though, even if the logic is a little flawed.

19th January

Robert E Lee was born today in 1807. He was a gentleman and one of the finest generals any country has produced. Abhorrent though slavery was, several men who fought for the South in the American Civil War didn't own slaves and didn't themselves approve. They were fighting for other causes, like state rights against the centralizing tyranny of Washington. Everybody, on both sides, treated Lee with respect and a way of life came to an end when he surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Court House in April 1865. His last words, years later on his death bed were 'Strike the tents!'
How cool is that?

In other news ...
Many of you will know that I am a dedicated cyclist. White Surrey and I have rattled along more West Sussex roads than you've had parking tickets and so I say 'Huzzah!' in remembrance of this day in 1903 when the first Tour de France was contested. It was journalist Henri Desgrange's idea that sixty blokes would pedal like maniacs for 3000 miles from Paris to Marseilles and back again. It was to be done in six steps over three weeks. I reckon Surrey and I could do it in two hours thirty. Oh, all right then, two hours thirty eight, allowing for the head wind.
By the way, there was no Lycra in 1903; heady days.

18th January

The first edition of the Boy's Own Paper hit the newstands today in 1879. It was published by the religious Tract Society and contained uplifting stories and tales of derring-do. It couldn't be published today because:-

• It has an apostrophe in its title.
• The Religious Tract Society isn't the great publishing phenomenon it once was.
• Such things are only available on Kindle.
• Boys can't read - even Nolan has been known to listen to a download of his set text (currently Fantastic Mr Fox) rather than read the original. He is definitely a chip, but not necessarily off this old block in this particular.
• Nobody knows what derring-do actually is. A quick vox pop around my top set in Year Seven came up with 'that magician bloke'. 

Did you see what I did just then, by the way? Apparently, that is a bulletted list and the latest in my journey towards complete control of the world of cyber. Mrs B will be so proud. I found it rather difficult to stop doing them, rather like when someone teaches you to ride a bike, they never tell you how to stop without falling over sideways into some nettles.

In other news ...
James Cook came across a group of islands in the Pacific 234 years ago today which the locals called Hawaii. The locals didn't like Cook very much - except perhaps as a light snack, as they eventually killed and, according to an inaccurate legend, ate him - probably because he called their land the Sandwich Islands. I should explain - because everyone has now forgotten - that this was in honour of the Earl of Sandwich, Comptroller (Big Cheese) of the Navy and not because of the snack thing mentioned earlier. Aloha!

17th January

'Great God, this is an awful place!' Yes, they were the words I used when I came to interview at Leighford High all those years ago, but I was actually quoting Robert Falcon Scott, who got to the South Pole exactly 100 years ago today, only to find a little tent in the white wilderness with a Norwegian flag pinned to it. It had been placed there by Raold Amundsen, the month before.
How must Scott have felt? I would have comforted myself -
a) in the knowledge that Amundsen had cheated by using dog sleds and
b) at least I wasn't on the Titanic.

In other news ...
The year is young, but I am sure that even so my loyal reader will have noticed that I am not a great cricket fan. As a spectator sport, it equates with watching paint dry, but I do have a little nostalgia for the sound of leather on willow and remember the great days when large, wheezing smokers and beer-drinkers strolled around English greens wearing whites. It was all so civilized, with a smattering of applause every now and again, slightly muffled by a cucumber sandwich or slice of seed cake. So, what went wrong? Well, in 1933 we killed it stone dead by using the 'bodyline' bowling tactic. Purists will disagree with me but it was essentially an attempt by British bowlers to kill - or at least seriously maim - Australian bowlers. It took a while, but the result today is plain to see: American baseball caps (why?); more body armour than the gladiators wore; and a profusion of sweat shirts and colours that have turned the game into a circus. Dressed like that, they might just as well be playing darts.

16th January

The silliest law in History was brought in ninety two years ago when America introduced the Volstead Act banning alcohol. In a country dragged down by Amendments to its Constitution, the 18th arguably brought more misery than anything else. Did it lessen alcohol consumption? No. Was it followed even by a minority of Americans? No. Did it add enormously to the boot-legging empire of gangsters like Al Capone? You betchya.
On a positive note however, it did give us Kevin Costner's The Untouchables which provided the best line in Prohibition Era gangster flicks. Having thrown a baddie off a skyscraper so that he crashes through the roof of a parked Chrysler on the tarmac far below, Costner (Eliot Ness) is asked 'Where's Nitti?' the man in question having been Frank 'the Enforcer' Nitti, long time pal of Capone. He replies, 'In the car.' Genius!
To get back to Volstead, though; what will they do next? Ban smoking in public places? Get, as I'm sure Eliot Ness used to say, real.

In other news ...
And talking of baddies, Ivan IV (who made Al Capone look like a choirboy) was crowned Tsar in Russia in 1547. He was responsible for the deaths of thousands of his own people, including his own son and was in many ways the creator of a vicious secret police who have continued right the way down to the KGB. To be fair to the man, we know from the exhumation of his body carried out in the 1960s that he suffered from a bone deformity which probably left him in agony most days.
Even so, Ivan, there was no need to be quite so tetchy.

Metternich, reading, as is his rather annoying habit, over my shoulder has fastened on the word 'vole'. His reading skills are at best rudimentary, although not at all bad for a cat, but I need to explain to him that there is no danger of voles being banned, so that he releases the grip he has on my left ear lobe in order that I can get on with my day relatively unmaimed.

15th January

This was the day, 222 years ago, that Fletcher Christian and other mutineers from the Bounty landed at the uncharted Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific. Thanks to Hollywood - specifically Clark Gable, Marlon Brando and Mel Gibson - most people see Christian as a hero, striking a blow for the ordinary seaman against the tyranny, not to say psychopathy of Captain William Bligh - specifically Charles Laughton, Trevor Howard and Anthony Hopkins.
The real Bligh was a fair man and a brilliant sailor and it was Fletcher Christian who was unstable and fomented the mutiny on the Bounty. The exact circumstances of his death are unclear, but it's at least likely he was killed in a fight over a Tahitian woman. Bligh went on to become an Admiral. So there is a God.

In other news ...
The End of Civilization As We Know It happened in 1971. The grand old LSD of British currency - that's pounds, shillings and pence if you're under fifty - was swept away to create decimalization, where everything is based on multiples of ten. All right, so the Romans would have approved, but for the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Norwegians and Normans who invaded this great country of ours, it simply made no sense at all. It was all quite simple: L stands for pound (obviously); s for shilling (duh!); and d for penny - could it be any clearer? There were 20 shillings in a pound. Now you don't have to be a mathematical genius to work out that before 1971 you got 140 more pennies to the pound than you did afterwards. Did nobody notice we were being conned?

AND  ... regrettably I have to break off this historical reverie to announce with deep sorrow, that Waterstone's Bookshop has finally abandoned its apostrophe. And thats a 'shame becaus'e apo'strophe's were all that kept this country afloat. Perhap's the Twenty-Twelver's have been s'peaking s'ens'e all along!

14th January

This is the day of infamy when the French President, Charles de Gaulle, said 'Non' (No) to Britain's grovelling request to be allowed to join the European Economic Community (EEC) forerunner of the European Union (EU) and at the time usually referred to as the Common Market. In 1963, this was outrage. After all, Britain had put him up - and put up with him - during the war and won his country back for him in 1944. What an appalling act of ingratitude everybody except de Gaulle said - and they were right.
On reflection of course, he was trying to be helpful, we all now realise, having a pretty good prescience of what a petit dejeuner du chien the EU has become today.

In other news ...
The Covent Garden Opera House re-opened after extensive renovation in 1947 and the show they opened with was Carmen. The whole thing was based on an old joke made popular by dear old Kenneth Horne in the 1960s - 'Carmen to the garden, Maud.' To which the reply was, 'Not just now; I'm Bizet.'
They just don't sing them like that anymore!

13th January

If you're as old as me (368) you'll remember Hugh O'Brien on the telly in a half hour show - they were all half an hour in the good old days when we apparently all had the concentration span of goldfish - as Marshal Wyatt Earp. The real guy died this day in 1929 and he's a fascinating character - played by Burt Lancaster, Henry Fonda, Kevin Costner and James Garner apart from O'Brien - with a moustache to die for. As a kid we all rooted for him at the gunfight at the OK Corral and just knew those Clantons and McLowerys were thoroughgoing baddies. I even had - and, thanks to the eBay watching proclivities of my good lady, have again - a replica Buntline Special Colt .45, Wyatt's purpose-built long-barrelled revolver.
When I grew up of course I realized that Earp was a rather oily character, liar, gambler and cheat. That's what being an historian does for you. Life was so much simpler when we were kids, wasn't it?

In other news ...
The Liverpool band known as the Beatles did quite well in the US pop charts this week in 1964, getting to a heady Number 45 with I Wanna Hold Your Hand. Billboard magazine said the track was 'a driving rocker with surf on the Thames sand'. I didn't understand that at the time and I still don't understand it now.

And finally - I don't know why I have written this blog for today; since as it is Friday 13th, everyone is hiding under their beds until it is all over.

12th January

Dear old Agatha Christie, the 'queen of crime' died today in 1976. I held a moment's silence in the Staff Room at the time but it was marred by some idiot (I think the Deputy Head) shouting 'The Mousetrap - the policeman did it!'
Can we just clear up her famous 'missing weekend' in 1926. She appeared in a hotel in Harrogate with no recollection of where she'd been. I've been to Harrogate on many occasions and it has happened to me every time. And anyway, the 'queen of crime' is clearly Mrs Detective Inspector Jacquie Carpenter-Maxwell, although to be honest if she wants to become a household name I think she needs to make it something that trips off the tongue with a little more alacrity.

In other news ...
Jack London was born today in 1876 (exactly a century before Agatha died - spooky, or what?). I've always had a soft spot for Jack. He not only captured the great outdoor of Canada and the US brilliantly in White Fang and Call of the Wild, his People of the Abyss about the Whitechapel ghetto a few years after Jack the Ripper, has never been bettered. Nobody wrote about London like London.

11th January

On this day in 1569, the first ever lottery was held in England, with tickets on sale at the door of St Paul's Cathedral in London. You can't get there now for the tents of the anti-capitalist protesters who are no doubt mightily miffed they haven't won the lottery yet. By the way, in 1569 the first prize was a night out with the Queen's First Minister, Lord Burleigh. The second prize was two nights out with him.

Look - do you mind? That wasn't an old joke in 1569.

In other news ...
Charing Cross railway station opened today in 1864. They used to have a bloke to sweep the horse s**t away so that ladies' skirts didn't drag through it on their way in. In Boris Johnson's London today you need a university degree to do that job and it only operates on alternate Thursdays due to health and safety regulations. I'm surprised that more people don't ride horses in London nowadays, though I may have missed the clause which states that they too are subject to the congestion charge.

10th January

Living as we do in leafy Leighford, we rarely take the Tube, but of course it offers huge scope for losing the odd child on school trips to sundry museums; and, strangely, it always is the very oddest child that you do lose. But just out of interest, the Metropolitan Line opened in London today in 1863. Not only were we the first railway nation, we were the first underground railway nation too. The idea was to clear congestion in the capital's streets. Where did it all go wrong? Boris - any ideas?

In other news ...
I was going to say something pithy and meaningful on the fact that eighty four years ago women on both sides of the Atlantic got the vote. Then I took one look at my lovely better half pumping iron in the kitchen and thought better of it. Except to say ... jolly good; about time too!

9th January

I'm getting quite used to this blogging lark now and don't have to get up a minute before 3.30 a.m. to get it ready for my reader. Hello, Trevor, by the way - thanks for dropping by. I daresay by the end of the year I will be rolling it out without a second thought. Of course, I would choose this year to begin - there is an extra day to contend with, but I'll try to manage the extra workload - I have been a teacher for ever, so extra workload means nothing to me!

I have to concede that William Pitt (the Younger, that is and no, Seven Aitch Kay, no relation at all to Brad) was a pretty good Prime Minister, but God rot him for doing what he did on this day in 1799. He introduced income tax! To be fair, it was only levied on the rich and was only temporary until Napoleon was defeated, but that's not the point. He put the idea into the minds of government and now they soak everybody with it. Thanks a bunch, Master Billy!

In other news ...
Apparently, Rudolf Bing was born on this day in 1902. He was an Austrian-born conductor and founded the Edinburgh Festival. But I don't really care about that - I just love the name. Put a 'Sir' on the front (which they did) and it sounds even better. When lots of people were trying to get his attention, it must have sounded like a scene from a submarine drama. Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing!

8th January

212 years ago today, the first soup kitchens were opened for the London poor. Isn't it nice to think that dear old George III's government was so kind to teachers?

In other news ...
Now, I don't mind too much that the Americans beat us at the battle of New Orleans today in 1812. I think they got lucky and they used sneaky tactics like hiding behind cotton bales, trees and so on and they had Charlton Heston to lead them (or is that just in the film The Buccaneer?).
No, what really annoyed me was Lonnie Donegan who had a hit with The Battle of New Orleans in the 1950s. Donegan was an Englishman born in Essex and it would have been nice if he'd recorded something from the English point of view. Just to let my American reader know that you aren't the only one to have had a Benedict Arnold in your midst.

Today being Sunday, we will be enjoying our usual Sunday game of Scrabble, at which I will be trounced by Miss Troubridge, come round specially for the fun. She may be a million years old and as mad as a box of frogs, but my word that woman can play Scrabble! She knows more eight letter words containing an ex, a zed, a queue and a jay than is normal in a woman of her age. She has been keeping a cumulative score for the last twenty years or so and her score now has so many noughts in it we have to use wider paper. She is a lesson to us all - all you have to do to win at Scrabble is to be so old and doddery that no one argues with you when you put pqzxyhgj across both triples, using up all your letters (apparently it is a breed of coelacanth found only in a single tributary of the Amazon).

7th January

I have just run another pine needle into my foot - my word, that year went by quickly. But wait, it isn't next Christmas yet, it is merely an inadequately hoovered carpet, courtesy of Mrs B that has caused me to resort yet again to the tweezers. Perhaps I should keep quiet about her domestic shortcomings, as it is she who keeps me up and running, IT-wise. You can't have everything. Just because she is a whizz with computers, that is no reason to suppose she can wield a Henry with any skill.

So, to History. In 1558 on this day, the British lost their last foothold in France - the town of Calais. The Queen, Mary Tudor (not called 'Bloody' for another three centuries, by the way) was heartbroken. Everybody else was delighted.

In other news ... George Washington was unanimously elected the first president of the newly formed United States 223 years ago today. It was unfortunate that his name was George or he might have considered accepting the crown the colonists offered him. It would have been a bit naff, not to say confusing, to set up another King George having spent time, money and blood to get rid of the old one.
Ironically, of course, the American Presidents of Washington's future were to have more power than any king of England ever had.

And finally ... in 1990 the Leaning Tower of Pisa was closed as the rate of lean was increasing to the point where it could easily have become the Horizontal Tower of Pisa. As a tourist attraction, it wouldn't have had quite the same pull, somehow.

6th January

Twelfth Night and about time too. At last we can take down the Christmas Tree, now needleless and looking like a nuclear blast survivor and stash the tinsel away for another year. Nolan and the Count (son and cat, in that order for those of you unfamiliar with the Maxwell menage) are already counting the weeks until next Christmas but let them count; as long as I don't run another pine needle into my foot for around another forty nine weeks, that is enough for me. The sole point of this day is that it gave Will Shaxper of Stratford a title for one of his hilariously funny comedies. How we laughed.

In other news ... Sigmund Freud, dream analyst and inventor of the slip, grandfather of the late Lucien and Clement, wrote in 1938, 'What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.'
'They' of course were the Nazis who had just taken over Freud's native Austria in the Anschluss (Union). He was wrong of course - within five years the Nazis would be burning people as well.
Incidentally, they'd all got Freud's number. He was in the Black Book, a list of undesirables living in Britain drawn up by the SS in 1940. Had Operation Sealion worked and Hitler actually invaded Britain, Freud would have got his after all. Actually, though, he wouldn't. Although the compilers of the Black Book seemed unaware, he died in his bed in September 1939.

5th January

That's it - enough! One day back and the Christmas spirit is well and truly gone. According to the statisticians (who, let's face it, aren't real people at all) the worst day of the entire year is coming up next week. Apparently, this is because all of the Christmas bills arrive on the mat and the nation falls into a depression. Well, I just want to say the worst day was the first day of school, which was yesterday. So the thought of another, worse day coming up next week is not really a nice thought at all. So, let's have a little think about this day in history, rather than this day today!

One of the great lines in History coming up. The 30th President of the United States, John Calvin Coolidge, died today in 1933. Dorothy Parker asked 'How could they tell?' They don't ask them like that any more!

In other news ... England played Australia in the world's first one day match in 1871. The were actually trying to do us all a favour by speeding up a sport that is the least watchable of all (after golf and motor racing). Now, if they would just introduce the concept of tip and run, it could be really exciting - and, better still, all over in half an hour! And darts, I should have said. And snooker. Shot put. Cycling speed trials .... the list goes on, but cricket is pretty near the top, however you cut it. Olympics this year. Goody, goody!

4th January

Back to school - another day, another dollar. Wednesdays aren't too bad as I have no contact whatsoever with the class from hell, Nine Zed Are, so this is as good a start as can be wished. So, in other times, what happened on this day?

I've always found it rather odd that Isaac Newton, who was born on this day 369 years ago, should be regarded as one of the most brilliant minds in history. All right, he was passably competent at mathematics and gravitational apples, but his chemistry was far below that of the average Year 7 kid. He believed in elixirs of life, alchemists' stones and long-leggity beasties. His Principia Mathematica has been hailed as one of the Most Important Books of All Time - which is equally odd because it was written in Latin and only about six people in Britain at the time could read it.
Today, nobody can.
P.S, (That's Post Scriptum to you) this was also the day another great scientist, Galileo Galilei died. But curiously, he and Newton never met.

In other news, Jakob Grimm, one of the famous Brothers, was born in 1785. The importance of these guys is that their collection of folk tales told it like it was - a nasty world of rape, murder and terrifying demons. This is what kids want to read about - not the schmaltzy stuff of Mother Goose and Walt Disney.

3rd January

It was a busy day in the past, was 3rd January. Martin Luther (who was absolutely no relation to the black Civil Rights leader of nearly the same name, as I keep telling Ten Bee Four) really blew it  591 years ago today when the Pope finally lost patience and excommunicated him. In a long story cut short, Luther was a Dominican monk, a guy on the inside who knew exactly how corrupt the Catholic church was. Today, he would set up his blog and his twitter and get himself on Andrew Marr's Sunday TV chat show and tell us all about it. Then, he nailed his 95 theses (bullet points) to the door of Wittenburg cathedral because anybody who was anybody passed that way.
Astonishingly, having implied the Catholic church was a waste of time and that priests were pointless, he got off Scot (or rather, German) free and spent the rest of his life throwing ink-pots at the Devil and suffering appallingly from constipation.

And serve him right.

In other news ... Marcus Tullius Cicero was born in 106 BC. I used to think he was ancient Rome's greatest orator. Then I read a book on Cleopatra and found that he whinged about her because she forgot to lend him a book. Bearing in mind she had the biggest library in the world (at Alexandria) and was kept kind of busy ruling a vast empire and keeping the avaricious, thuggish Romans at bay, it's hardly surprising that she overlooked the loan of a book. Cicero didn't see it that way and said nasty things about her in letters to friends.
Eventually, somebody cut his head off and sent it as a present to Marc Antony's wife (not Cleopatra - the other one). Who wouldn't be delighted to receive a present like that: she stuck a hat pin in the dead orator's tongue, making her point.

January 2nd

I'm going to try not to be amazed each day that the blog goes on - bets have been placed amongst colleagues and the family that I will have forgotten how to do it by the end of January. Well, keep watching this space, because I intend to do the whole year. At least.

So, what was happening on this day in history?

Tex Ritter died on this day in 1974. White hats were doffed all over the Western world at his passing because he represented the kind of guy we all wanted to be - a singing cowboy. Picture the scene: the Indians are on the warpath; outlaws are rustling cattle and holding up the Overland Stage; Sleazeball Joe Macready is buying up all the property on Main Street - but none of this matters, because Tex is bursting into song and his little Dogies are getting along just fine. They don't make westerns like his any more - in fact, they hardly make Westerns, with the very creditable exception last year of True Grit and that was a remake - and we're all the sorrier for it.

In other news ...

Cardinal Richlieu (he's the baddie in the red outfit in the Musketeers films) set up the Academie Francaise in 1635 to safeguard the purity of the French language. Which is why, on the other side of the Channel, they have 'le weekend' during which they watch 'le football' whilst eating 'le fast food'. So that was a job well done - let's hear it for the Cardinal!

See you tomorrow!

January 1st

For those who are privy to the strange world of Peter Maxwell, let me just explain that I don't know how this works, how my daily jottings will get out there into what people apparently call cyberspace. I just know that Mrs B has told me what keys to press and occasionally I find that there is somewhere for me to write. Today is one of the lucky days. I'm sure that on others I will inadvertently end up buying a used Fiesta on eBay, but since I am here, I will do what I intend to do each day (with a following wind and a bit of help from passing IT staff, wives and my increasingly computer literate child and, rather more worryingly, cat) and that is share a few thoughts on historical events from the day in question. So, on this day ...

Paul Revere was born, 277 years ago. If you're British, you've probably never heard of him; if you're American, he's right up there with Babe Ruth and Mother Teresa. He was a silversmith and Ratfink who gave the game away in the War of American Independence by galloping all over the villages of New England, shouting, 'The British are coming! The British are coming!' The more sensible Americans who heard him just adhered to the later World War Two advice - 'Keep Calm and Carry On Drinking Coffee.'

In other news ... in 1961 those mysterious fellows who design and mint coins had one less job to do. They stopped making farthings, the smallest and dinkiest coin, which, the oldies will remember, had a cute little Jenny Wren on it (and of course Her Majesty, God Bless Her, on the other side). Depending on your take on life, this was either a sensible move because you hadn't been able to buy anything for a farthing for at least a century or it was part of the international conspiracy that was to lead to decimalization, the advent of the European Union and the End of Civilization.

Well ... that was surprisingly simple. The next surprise will be when I am here again tomorrow, with some January 2 facts. Perhaps I ought to just stay in front of this screen all night, to be sure.

And finally, don't forget; if you can read this, thank a teacher.