On this day in 1874 Arthur Orton was found guilty of perjury in a trial that had lasted for 260 days (the longest in legal history after that of Warren Hastings, Governor General of India). Orton swore he was the rightful claimant to a small fortune belonging to the Tichborne family and that he was himself Roger Tichborne, the missing heir. The only problem was that Roger was eight stone wringing wet and Arthur had a far more realistic claim to be the fattest man in England.
Don't tell me they were all playing the anti-plump card as early as 1874!
In other news ...
Today in 1973 members of the Lakota nation - that's Sioux if you, like me, were brought up on Western B movies - occupied the village of Wounded Knee in South Dakota in a gesture against the continuing bad treatment of native Americans - that's Indians if you're a Western fan or Christopher Columbus. In the original 'battle' of Wounded Knee in 1890, the 7th Cavalry, still smarting over the thrashing they got on the Big Horn fourteen years earlier, opened their Gatling guns on unarmed men, women and children led by their chief Big Foot. This was described in the American press as a battle; the defeat of an arrogant idiot called George Custer was described as a massacre,
Go, as modern Americans say, figure.
