I know my father was a decent rugby player and an accomplished boxer during his national service, but I’m not really sure where his reverence for the world’s greatest distance runners emanated from. Growing up I remember him talking with great enthusiasm about the likes of Paavo Nurmi, Vladimir Kuts and Emil Zatopek… but one…
Just about every poker player on the planet knows that a pair of black aces and eights are “dead man’s hand” and that the reason harks back to when Wild Bill Hickok was shot in the back of the head while holding them in a game of five-card stud in Deadwood, South Dakota. But the…
At 6ft 9in tall there had to be a role for Ted Cassidy somewhere in Hollywood and he found it as one of the least talkative characters of the 1960s… a creepy butler by the name of Lurch, who tended to the needs of television’s zaniest family, the Addamses. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 87 years…
One of the earliest recollections I have as a teenager took place more than 45 years ago, probably due to the 1974 miner’s strike and the “three-day week” which interrupted lessons at our school. For some reason I can’t recall we were sent to the youth club attached to the school premises, where staff had…
It’s 14 years ago today that the original creative force behind legendary British progressive rock band Pink Floyd passed away, his life cut short by an excessive lifestyle that saw only glimpses of his immense talent appear to the world. Syd Barrett, who joined the world on 6 January 1946, provided 10 of the 11…
It’s the 76th anniversary today of the death of a man who passed away almost penniless despite generating ideas that transformed our daily lives and created multiple fortunes for himself and those who financed him. Ground-breaking scientist Nikola Tesla was born in Smiljan, in what is now Croatia, in 1856 during what he claimed was…
On its first release in January 1955 it spent five weeks on top of the British charts, on it’s second in April 1968 it reached number 20 and on a third release in March 1974 it got as high as number 12. In all it spent 57 weeks in the British charts and was the…
If 2020 had gone to plan, the UK would currently be in the middle of the Wimbledon tennis fortnight, with Serbia’s Novak Djokovic probably still in the running to defend his title and secure a sixth championship crown. But this year is not a normal year, Wimbledon was cancelled due to an alleged pandemic sweeping…
With so many distractions in the modern world to occupy our time it’s easy for events to pass us by, but when pubs are shut, offices closed and there’s no football on the box it presents an opportunity to catch up with all the things we’ve been meaning to do but never found the time…
Last week, on 24 June, it was the 25th anniversary of the 1995 Rugby World Cup final when Francois Piennar inspired a nation by leading South Africa to their first World Cup triumph on home soil, earning great praise for his leadership from South African president Nelson Mandela. The 1995 Rugby World Cup was the…
