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!
