14th December

Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, reached the South Pole today in 1911, the first man to do so. He left the Norwegian flag there and a note for Robert Falcon Scott leading a British team trying to beat him there. It simply said 'Bobby - Nah-Nah-di-Nah-Nah. Love, Ro.'

In other news ...
Max [no relation] Planck came out with the quantum leap notion in Physics today in 1900. Not everybody was impressed. Isaac Newton turned in his grave and Alfred Nobel coined the expression 'thick as a Planck'.

10th December

It may surprise you - it certainly surprised me - to discover that the first territory in America to give women the vote was Wyoming, 143 years ago today. Then I realized that there were 428,000 men in Wyoming in 1869, 3.2 million cattle and two women.

Heigh ho.

In other news ....
Alfred Nobel won the world's prize for biggest idiot today in 1892 when he said that his dynamite invention would put an end to war. On the contrary, it increased battlefield casualties a hundredfold.

Nice one, Alfred - back to the drawing board, old son!