Elias Howe died today in 1867. Who he? i hear you cry. He was the chappie who invented the sewing machine and (unusually for pioneers in any field in the past) made a mint out of it (not literally, Seven Eff Em - he wasn't that clever). They even wrote a song about the sewing machine - 'A sewing machine, a sewing machine, a girl's best friend. If I didn't have my sewing machine, I'd go round the [expletive supplied by Seven Eff Em] bend.'
They don't make them - or write them - that way any more.
In other news ...
Postcodes were introduced in Britain today in 1959. Yes, I was surprised by that too. It was the start of the End of Civilization, of course and another step on the road to 1984 (naturally!). What happened to those glorious postal triumphs of the past when General Wilson of the First World War fame addressed an envelope to himself as 'The Ugliest Man in the British Army' (that was all he wrote) and it actually reached him.
