9th October

'Che' Guevara was shot dead by the Bolivian army today in 1967. Let's forget how ludicrous it was that a self-centred, rather useless asthmatic medical student could become the icon of a generation (mine) appearing on posters and t-shirts without number. Let's have a closer look instead at the Bolivian Army. They shot Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid too. Is nobody doing anything about this?

In other news ...
Today in 1897, Henry Sturmey drove away from Land's End in a 4.5 hp Daimler with the intention of being the first person to drive to John O'Groats - 929 miles. Today, because of roadworks, contraflow, traffic cones and utterly unnecessary 50 mph speed limits on open roads, that journey would take five days.

Turn around when it is safe to do so.

17th March

Gottleib Daimler was born today in 1834. He was one of the many pioneers of the motor car and aren't we all  grateful that cars were named after their inventors' surnames rather than Christian names, otherwise we'd have had, along with the fabulous Gottleibs, Henrys, Charleses, Karls, Andre-Gustaves and Edsels ... oh, wait a minute, there really was an Edsel.

You take my point.

In other news ...
It's one of those irritating pub quiz questions; who invented the elastic band? The answer is Stephen Perry, who was born today in 1845. One wonders why he did it. I'd like to think it was to twang bits of screwed up paper around a classroom to annoy his teachers, but it couldn't have been because, looking at his dates, one of them would have (quite rightly) beaten him to death.