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After dining for hours and splashing lots of cash on a sumptuous meal for herself and her friends here in the UK, a customer was refused a glass of tap water. In France, it is normal to provide a carafe of iced tap water on the table with a meal. In Finland, their people say that their water is so delicious and pure no one would think of asking for mineral water.
The French 'Health Service' requires people to carry a Carte Vital which is about the size of a credit card. The Carte Vital is programmed with details of everything that has been prescribed for the holder e.g. blood tests, medication, etc. This information is available to chemists, doctors, hospitals, A& E, district nurses and ambulance crews; who, having a desk-top or portable computer, can view it's contents and prescribe or treat accordingly. People who have lived in the UK for fifty years and who have been in France for two years say that they prefer the French system.
Einstein smoked a pipe. He considered that smoking enabled him to calm his thoughts when he was thinking.
A Victorian, Charles Babbage born 1791 died 1871.invented, in1834 an analytical engine which could work out complex mathematical problems. It consisted of hand driven gears. Had this machine been adopted it could have solved many of the problems of that time e.g. where a projectile would land when fired from a cannon or rifled gun which was one of the first things the Americans did when they obtained a computer - thus shortening subsequent wars. He died penny-less in that the British parliament did not recognise any use for it. Tommy Flowers a Londoner born in 1905, was a post office engineer working at Dollis Hill the General Post Office research establishment in the UK. Working on the first valves, he proposed to the British War Office during the second world war 1939 - 45, that he could speed-up the problem of code breaking synchronisation - by constructing an electronic computer. His idea of using approx. 9000 valves was considered too unreliable and his bid for money was rejected. On returning to Dollis Hill he built his computer called 'Colossus' using post office materials and one thousand pounds of his own money. The machine proved to be so successful the the War Office ordered ten of them. After the war he was given a thousand pounds for his work and a BEM medal. After the war he attempted to upgrade the post office telephone system using valves, but the official secrets act prevented him from revealing his experience in this field and his proposal was rejected. Subsequently, his part in helping in the war effort and his input into our present better standard of living was revealed by the Americans in 1974. Using their freedom of information act they requested more information of the computer that the British had destroyed in 1945 and of which blueprints had been given to them.
In 1790 the National
Assembly of France requested the French Academy of Sciences to "deduce an
invariable standard for all the measures and all the weights". The Commission
appointed by the Academy created a system that was, at once, simple and
scientific. The unit of length was to be a portion of the Earth's circumference.
Measures for capacity (volume) and mass were to be derived from the unit of
length, thus relating the basic units of the system to each other and to nature.
Furthermore, larger and smaller multiples of each unit were to be created by
multiplying or dividing the basic units by ten and its powers. This feature
provided a great convenience to users of the system, by eliminating the need for
such calculations as dividing by sixteen (to convert ounces to pounds) or by
twelve (to covert inches to feet). Similar calculations in the metric system
could be performed simply by shifting the decimal point, e.g. 156.00 divided by
10 = 15.600. Thus the metric system
is a "base-10" or "decimal" system.
The British
Standards Institution produced a survey in 1963 which indicated a
significant majority of industry in the UK favoured metrication. In 1965 the
Government announced support for metricating the UK within 10 years.
In the following twenty five years,
little progress was made, and it was left to European Union (EU) Directives
on Weights and Measures in 1989 and 1991, which declared the metric system
as the official measurement system of all member countries. Year 2008, the UK is still using miles and pints - so much for
having lawyers and artists in our executive.
Japan - 94Mbits/sec,
France 44Mbits/sec, Korea 43Mbits/sec, Sweden 14Mbits/sec, New Zealand
14Mbits/sec, Italy 13Mbits/sec,
Finland 13Mbits/sec, Portugal 12Mbits/sec, Australia 12Mbits/sec, Norway
11Mbits, Luxemburg 11Mbits, United Kingdom 9Mbits/sec.
The Tour de France
In 1902, Henri
Desgrange was director of the sports daily L'Auto and was looking for an idea to
crush the rival newspaper Le Vélo. "What if we organized a bicycle race
around France?" suggested Geo Lefèvre, a young journalist on the staff of
L'Auto. The idea seemed unrealistic at first, but it soon took shape. On July
1st, 1903, at precisely 3.16 p.m., sixty professional and amateur cyclists set
off from Paris on a three week, 1,509-mile trip down the roads of the first
'Tour de France.
The race was an immediate hit with the public. All over
France huge crowds came out to see "the slaves of the road," as French
reporter Albert Londres called them, and to cheer them on. Racing conditions
during the first few years of the Tour were, to say the least primitive - simple
equipment, pot-holed roads, never-ending stages, and night-time departures.
Barred from receiving any technical help, except at control
points, riders who broke down had to repair their (20.4kg) 45 pound bicycles on their
own. For example, in 1903 and 1919, the unfortunate Eugène Christophe twice had
to mend his broken front forks at a village forge!
In 17th century
England, doctors transfused blood from sheep to humans. Several people died in
the process.
In the early 19th century, Dr. James Blundell, appalled by
the death rate for women in childbirth, particularly from haemorrhaging, began
to experiment in England with transfusions of blood in dogs. Encouraged by the
results, he performed what appears to be the first transfusion of whole blood
from one human to another in 1818. Blundell established the importance of
keeping air out of the blood, and of keeping a steady flow of blood. But
transfusion remained relatively rare until the discovery of blood types at the
beginning of the 20th century, and anti-coagulants a decade later.
The 'yard' as a measure of length can be traced back to early Saxon kings. They wore a sash or girdle around the waist that could be removed and used as a convenient measuring device. The word 'yard' comes from the Saxon word 'gird' meaning the circumference of a persons waist.
At the start of the second world war the British government drafted miners into the forces. Subsequently the government realised that there were insufficient miners to provide the coal necessary to maintain our coal supplies. Young men (some of which had taken youth training for the services) and who had really expected to join either the army, navy or air force, were forced to become miners. Many of the civilian population in the mining districts to which these young men were sent, not being aware as to why these young men, some as young as 16, were replacing their own sons who had been sent to war, treated them badly with even the police questioning them as to why they were not in uniform. However, the 'Bevan Boys' kept our industry supplied with coal, our factories built the spitfire etc. and finally.......60 years later, they have in 2008 been awarded a medal for their service in the defence of our nation.
It has been reported that an employee for Ansett Australia Airlines, who happened to have the last name Gay, got on a plane recently using the company's 'Free Flight' offer for staff. However, when Mr Gay tried to take his seat, he found it occupied by a fare paying passenger. So, not to make a fuss, he simply chose another seat. Unknown to Mr Gay, another Ansett flight at the airport experienced mechanical problems. The passengers of this flight were re-routed to various other airplanes. A few were put on Mr Gay's flight and anyone who was holding a 'free' ticket was being ask to get off. Ansett officials, armed with a list of these 'freebee' ticket holders boarded the plane, as is the practise, to remove them in favour of fare paying passengers. Of course, our Mr Gay was not sitting in his assigned seat. So when the Ticket Agent approached the seat were Mr Gay was supposed to be sitting, she asked a startled customer "Are you gay?" The man, shyly nodded that he was, at which point she demanded "Then you have to get off the plane." Mr Gay, overhearing what the agent had said, tried to clear up the situation: "You've got the wrong man. I'm Gay!" This caused an angry third passenger to yell "Hell! I'm gay too! They can't kick us all off!" Confusion reined as more and more passengers began yelling that Ansett had no right to remove gays from their flights - it is reported that Ansett have refused to comment on the incident.
The Klez worm is a bit of sneaky computer code that arrives by email, probably from someone you know. At least it says “From” a familiar name. It appropriates that name from the address book on another computer, and gets your address for the “To” the same way. It would like to use your machine as a launching pad to continue crawling around the Internet. And that’s not the worst of it. It might carry a file-destroying virus in an attachment. Open it and it may also try to destroy your anti-virus software.
To
find it, we have to return to the days when the ideal figure was ample, not
anorexic, when the bustle was in the avant-garde and human beings, like pianos,
stood on limbs, not legs.
The publisher's name was Samuel Orchard Beeton, an Englishman
whose wife, Isabella, was to write the popular Book of Household Management. In
1852, before he met Isabella, Samuel, only 21, put out the first issue of the
Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine. At the time, you couldn't go to a store and
buy ready-to-wear clothing. So, Beeton included a paper dress pattern in each
issue, allowing his readers to be au courant on the cheap. The fashion magazine
was born.
The English Derby is a
horse race, run since 1780 and named after Edward Stanley, the 12th Earl of
Derby. This annual June event, is a high point on the English social calendar
and takes place on Epsom Downs.
The rather odd little black hat that some men wear at the
Derby became known as a derby or bowler. Why? Some pinheads say because it looks
like a bowling ball. The alternative story is that a fox hunter, tired of having
his high hat knocked off by low-hanging branches, had a French hat maker named
Beaulieu make him a 'derby'. The English, having at best an ambivalent
relationship to all things French, anglicized it to “bowler”?.
n 60 or 61 AD, while the Roman governor Gaius Suetonius Paullinus was leading a campaign in North Wales, the Iceni rebelled. Members of other tribes joined them.
It was the Roman
procurator's fault: King Prasutagus of the proud Iceni tribe, whose kingdom was
in the eastern region, and a keen supporter of the Romans, had recently died leaving
half his kingdom to Rome and the other half to his widow and two daughters. Catus
the roman procurator was ordered by Rome to value the Iceni possessions. His
method of doing this incensed the Iceni, causing them to protest and finally to
riot. In the west, the main Roman army was intent on wiping out the last of the
Druids in Anglesey.
When the local Roman troops moved in they found the Iceni in a
justifiable rage. Believing that their job was to teach these British natives a
lesson, the officers led their men to the residence of the king's widow,
Boudicca, and ordered them to confiscate her possessions. This was the final
insult to the powerful tribe, and the operation turned into a fiasco. The
queen's faithful servants began to attack those who, it seemed to them, had come
to loot the royal house, and the Roman troops retaliated. By
the end of that day, Boudicca had been dragged out of her house and flogged, and
her two daughters raped.
It was all that was needed. The fire of revolt against Roman
oppression was lit - and the conflagration spread with a speed that astonished
the conquerors.
The entire tribe of the Iceni and their powerful neighbours
the Trinovantes rose at once and a great horde of tens of thousands moved to
destroy the nearest Roman settlement of Camulodunum (a Roman colonia or administration
centre), then on to Colchester and then onto Londinium, burning and destroying
everything Roman.
The Iceni were finally defeated in the south of England by
the main Roman army employing their 'wedge' of infantry, with cavalry on the wings
technique of attack. Boudicca escaped with her daughters but took poison to
avoid eventual capture. Their bodies it is said, were brought back to Norfolk and
buried at Quidenham.
The UV Index tells you what level of potentially harmful ultraviolet rays you will have to deal with if, like mad dogs and Englishmen, you go out in the noonday sun. It ascends from 0 to 10 and is influenced by four variables. The first is the density of the ozone layer, which helps to block these rays. Clouds, another factor, perform a similar function. The season also comes into play: the sun’s rays are more direct in the summer. The relative height of your location is also relevant, in that, the higher you are the less protection clouds and ozone offer you.
With all the success of the unmanned spy planes over Afghanistan, the U.S. military is going ahead with plans to build a fleet of robot-controlled submarines. These submarines are designed to go ahead of any of our armed forces and patrol a coastline for any mines and map out an area. There is even talk of arming them in the future to fire on enemy ships or submarines. The drones would be torpedo shaped and would be fired out of an existing manned submarine to monitor and report back to the commanders. These unmanned submarines are likely to save many lives for those in our armed forces.
Skid
row suggests a place where people have slipped after losing their footing in
life. Metaphorically that's accurate, but the literal reference is more
specific. It began as skid road, which comes from America's northwest: timber country.
This was the road over which lumbermen dragged logs to a skid way, down which the timber slid to a
river. Skid road was also what loggers called the rough part of town where they
took their pleasure on Saturday night. If you lived or hung out there full-time,
you were not going to be in good shape. The expression seems to have become skid row
sometime around World War II.
Source: DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN SLANG by Harold Wentworth and
Stuart B. Flexner
If
you want the scientific explanation, it's all in the retina, the light-sensitive
membrane in your eye. It's not exactly a mirror so most of the time light does
not reflect off of it. But the light from a camera's flash is so intense that it
does come back at the camera's lens. The red colour is from the blood vessels in
the membrane.
Cats, like some other animals, have an extra reflective layer on their retina so
even shining a flashlight at them in the dark produces a reflection.
Electrical appliances are sold
to the public with a supply cable. This cable has to be able to carry the
normal electrical current that the appliance requires, without overheating.
However, if a
serious fault occurs in the appliance it can take more current than its cable
can carry, causing the cable to overheat and possibly catch fire. For example,
in the bulb in a table lamp, the two posts holding the filament (the bit
that lights up) can collapse against each other and create a short circuit,
causing the bulb to take more current than the limit of the cable, which will
then overheat. To prevent this from happening a fuse is fitted in the cable's
plug to protect the cable from catching fire.
In
order for this to work, the fuse that you use must be suitable for the cable. If
you have a 5 amp cable which is safe for an appliance using up to 5 amps, the fuse in the plug supplying it with power must be 5 amps (or less).
To work out the amperes (amps) which other appliances use, divide the Power of the appliance in
watts e.g. 2000watts, by your supply Voltage e.g. 250v and you have the amps, equals in this case
to 8amps. Use a 10amp fuse (the lowest available to buy) and a 13amp cable.
An interesting point about the supply of electricity is
that during heavy loads on the power station (e.g. Christmas Day) the voltage drops
to compensate, e.g. to 230v. What effect will this have on the amperes (amps) taken by
your appliances?.
Vets may still remind you to bring in your furry friends once a year as a matter of course. But some research now points to the possibility that these shots offer immunity for many years, not just one. More disturbing are the possibility of dangerous, even fatal side effects of annual shots. This is now being further investigated, as possible consequences in some animals of too many vaccinations are tumours, autoimmune diseases and hyperthyroidism./ Source: www.wsj.com
In
1946 Dr. Percy Spencer, an engineer with the Raytheon Corporation MA USA, was working
with a magnetron tube, an emitter of microwave energy invented six years
earlier in Britain by Sir John Randall and Dr.A. H. Boot. Spencer, got too close
to the tube and a chocolate bar in his pocket melted. This chocolate loving....
and therefore, right-thinking.... engineer drew the proper conclusion: microwaves
could cook food.
Raytheon
used his discovery to produce a "Radar Range" for restaurants, which
by 1952 became available as a home microwave oven.
The first anaesthetic was whisky, but I can't imagine that dealing with more than a fifth of the pain. Modern surgery begins with a Connecticut dentist, Horace Wells, who in 1844 used, don't laugh .... nitrous oxide to dull the pain of a tooth extraction. Two years later, after progress in developing a mechanism to deliver this painkiller evenly, surgeons used it in removing a tumour from a patient at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Within a year, this anaesthetic technique became standard throughout the world
Grab
a white shirt, dip it in water, and voila, it turns grey right before your very
eyes. If we hadn't all seen it much too often it would make for an impressive
magic trick.
What
causes this optical transformation is simple science. When fabric gets wet,
light coming towards it refracts within the water, dispersing the light. In
addition, the surface of the water causes incoherent light scattering. The
combination of these two effects causes less light to reflect to your eyes and
makes the wet fabric appear darker.
The
spices in most of the hot foods that we eat are oily, and, like your elementary
school science teacher taught you, oil and water don't mix. In this case, the
water just rolls over the oily spices.
So
what can you do to calm your aching tongue? Try one of these three methods. Eat
bread. The bread will absorb the oily spices. A second solution is to drink
milk. Milk contains a substance called "casein" which will bind to the
spices and carry them away. Finally, you could drink something alcoholic.
Alcohol will dissolve the oily spices.
The most in any place in a given year was the 905 inches that fell on Cherrapunki, India in 1861.Cherrapunji is 1290 meters above sea level and much of the torrential rains run off the mountains into the valley below. The irrigation system for the town of Cherrapunji is insufficient to provide adequate amounts of clean, potable water during the dry season. People who live there frequently have to travel on foot for several kilometres to bathe and get drinking water.
The
Gurney Clock was given to the people of Norwich by Barclays Bank to mark the
200th anniversary of the Bank's association with the City.
Master
clock maker Martin Burgess was commissioned to design and build the clock
mechanism, and rather than opt for an electrically powered machine, decided to
develop a mechanical weight-driven clock.
Time
is measured by a weight-driven observatory regulator of a type designed by John
Harrison, the eighteenth century horologist, who built the first ever successful
marine chronometer (enabling 'longitude' to be measured accurately). Harrison's
regulator clocks are not well known, because even now their principles are not
fully understood.
Haward
Horological designed the 'animation' with sculptor Michael Barber. It
represents:
1. Barclays Bank - a set of banker's scales.
2. The City of Norwich - heraldic symbols of the lion and the castle.
3. The 'Movement' - represents the circular flow of money from the city to
the bank and back again. On the hour bronze balls are taken by the Lion and
passed down a track to the scales and then on to the castle. At one o'clock, one
ball is released and at two o'clock, another ball is released and so on.
More
detail:
Regulator - the name regulator is given to a precision weight
driven time piece clock with some form of compensation pendulum.
Wheels - are of duralumin for lightness.
Weight - made of brass and drives the clock for almost seven
days.
Hours - are on a half ring dial, and each end of the hand
passes them anti-clockwise every 12 hours.
Minutes - the minute wheel turns clockwise once an hour and
carries the minute hand past the dial ring.
Pendulum - is driven through a grasshopper escapement that
gives it correctly proportioned impulses. Its weight is three pounds. It is a
brass cased lenticular pendulum bob, split down the middle to expose the
compensator, which is made of pure iron and plated with nickel.
The
Clock was handed over to the City of Norwich in July 1987. The animation and
case were reworked by GEI Autowrappers to respect the new environment within
which the clock is now housed - The Castle Mall shopping precinct.
Who originated income tax? Well Prime Minister William Pitt devised the first one that worked in England around 1800. The British government needed the revenue to finance its war with France. That's where we got the slang expression to describe something that's really bad: "It's the Pitts?" possibly.
People
who ran illegal dice games in England three centuries ago weren't taking any
chance on going to jail. They employed a man whose sole job was to swallow the
dice in the event of a raid. Maybe that's why they called playing dice
"shooting craps..." in America.
The
ancient Greeks made dice from the shoulder blades of sheep. Losers in crooked
dice games might thus truly feel that they had been fleeced.
The most popular longest English words are Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (a word from the musical Mary Poppins) or Antidisestablishmentarianism (a movement opposed to the separation of church and state) 28 letters. However Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis 45 letters, meaning 'a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust' appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1936. Critics have complained that this is a technical term, not in general use.
In the Middle Ages an eke name was a
name in addition to your formal name. Most people did not have last names and in
any village there might be several people with the same name. To avoid
confusion, there would be William the Blacksmith, William the Tanner, William
the Baker etc. Those were their eke or additional names, a concept we've adopted
for informally referring to any William as Bill his additional name.
Now what if I wrote and pronounced
"an eke name" as "a neke name"? This linguistic looseness is
called noncing. We arrived at the word "nickname" because over the
years the words got slightly rearranged.
Modern dams are wonders of engineering, vast walls of concrete that divert mighty rivers, create lakes out of nothing, and generate enough power to light cities. The wonder is that people in the ancient world could also construct these marvels using much less advanced technology than is available to us today. In fact the first significant dam to be built was meant to supply drinking water, by containing the Nile in Egypt during the millennium 4000 BC. Heavy rainwater made it collapse.
The "hue" in hue and cry has nothing to do with colour. It comes down to us from a word in Old French, huer, which meant to cry out. It arrived in England with the Norman Conquest and eventually was incorporated in the common law term "hu e cri" That's what a lawman would do if he was chasing a felon and wanted help from passers-bye. He would set off a hu e cri, a hue and cry -- literally a loud cry for them to come running to his assistance. If they didn't, they would need a medieval lawyer themselves.
In fact it's ironic that Americans proudly sing a song that originally mocked them and their notion that they should be free and independent. It originated as a 14th century nonsense song in Holland about a silly character named "Yankee-Doodle." English school children adopted it to make fun of Oliver Cromwell. In the same spirit the British troops fighting against the colonists in the American Revolution poked fun at their adversaries with the song. But wouldn't you know it! The Americans not only shot from behind trees at the Redcoats who were marching in the open, in formation, they also turned their own song against the British troops.
In the 1930s people bought cashews, peanuts and pistachios
from vending machines. Competition was hot among the nut purveyors, and those
selling pistachios played a little shell game, dying their product a bright red
to make it stand out. First they caught your eye, and then they messed up your
hands as the dye transferred from the nuts to your fingers. The custom has held.
In truth pistachios needed some
dressing up because, compared to other kinds of nuts, they were quite ugly.
The nut pickers harvested pistachios from trees by knocking them off with poles.
Then the nuts were tossed into burlap bags and later, their outside husk was
ground off. By then they looked ready for the nut hospital.
A man found a cocoon for a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared, he
sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its
body through the little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It
appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and could go no farther. Then
the man decided to help the butterfly.
He took a pair of scissors and snipped the remaining
bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. Something was strange. The
butterfly had a swollen body and shrivelled wings. The man continued to watch
the butterfly because he expected at any moment, the wings would enlarge and
expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither
happened. In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with
a swollen body and deformed wings. It was never able to fly.
What the man in
his kindness and haste did not understand, was that the restricting cocoon and
the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the small opening of the
cocoon are God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its
wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the
cocoon.
The difficulties of life
are challenges which make us strong enough to live in the traumatic world in
which God has put us in. Not only that, we could never fly if there were no
challenges to beat.
Mastering English grammar seems about as easy as learning the art of black magic. The word "grammar" entered medieval English as "gramarye", via Scotland. The Scots got it from the French word, "grimoire", which meant a collection of magic spells. The connection was made between grammar and magic because most people then were illiterate, so any linguistic smarty-pants was metaphorically seen as dabbling in sorcery.
The Druids, ancient Celtic priests who performed human sacrifices, may have used Stonehenge for their rituals, but there's no evidence that they built it. In fact, we don't know for sure who did. The huge stone monoliths, possibly an ancient astronomical calendar, are on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. The stones themselves were transported from Wales, 300 miles away in about 2000 B.C., and placed amidst a series of ditches and pits dug as many as a thousand years earlier.
The Taj Mahal in India, Shah Jahan's divinely elaborate
tribute to his 17th century sweet-heart, is one of the world's wonders. Yes,
Jahan was madly in love with Mumtaz, one of his four wives. Yet what do we know
about her? What was she like to merit such architectural affection?
She was baaaad! Intolerant to an
extreme, she insisted that her hubby persecute the country's small settlement of
Christians. Mumtaz personally supervised their sale into slavery and had their
priests stomped to death by elephants. Poor Jahan, looking for love in all the
wrong places. Maybe he should have erected something more appropriate to
memorialise Mumtaz -- a high-rise dungeon or a parking garage for elephants.
Lifts (elevators) rank as the safest form of transportation and have
the record of only one fatality every 100 million miles travelled. That's pretty
good, unless you happen to be the one.
Steps on the other hand, are five times more dangerous than
lifts. That's
because very few people fall off a lift.
I'll bet that more people know how a ventriloquist throws his
voice than know why his talent is identified as "ventriloquism"
Ventriloquism goes back at least to
ancient Rome, where holy men mixed prophecy with pizzazz. They didn't just
predict, but in a bit of hocus-pocus, threw their voice so that their prediction
seemed to come from outside themselves. The Romans believed that our voices
originate in our bellies. The Latin word for belly is "venter" and
"loqui" means to speak, producing a word that over the centuries
evolved into the modern "ventriloquism." And there you have it: belly
talk.
Test Match History
The first ever Test Match was played in Melbourne between the
15th and 19th of March, 1877. This was to be the first time England toured
Australia without being invited by the Australian organizers. The tour was
arranged by Sussex cricketer James Lillywhite; who therefore managed and
captained the touring party of only twelve players. Many saw the side as a 2nd
rate side due to the fact that many first choice players didn't go, including W.
G. Grace. Although the batting was considered to be weak, the bowling most
certainly wasn't and included the three leading bowlers in the country, namely
Alfred Shaw, Allen Hill and James Southerton. Included in the party was the best
wicket-keeper at the time, Ted Pooley of Surrey. However due to an unfortunate
set of circumstances, he didn't play in the series as he was arrested in New
Zealand. During the tour, there was great interest in the outcome of all the
matches and Pooley was a lot wiser in the ways of betting than the local people.
Needless to say, Pooley placed a bet on one of the matches, guessing how many
players would receive ducks. Pooley cleaned up and won a handsome amount of
money, £10. The man refused to pay, a fight broke out, damage was caused to
property and this is why England's leading wicket- keeper was in New Zealand
awaiting a trial ! As a postscript to this story, Pooley never did play another
match for England on the tour, incredibly enough, the New Zealand public felt so
much sympathy that they collected money for him, the amount raised ...£50!
When the English team finally made the
trip back to Australia they were not in very good shape, many were exhausted
from the trials and tribulations of the New Zealand leg of the tour. Players had
had to contend with landslides and had also been forced to swim across a river
to rescue some horses. At the same time! Due to the unavailability of Pooley,
Henry Jupp was expected to fill in, however he was suffering from inflammation
of the eyes and a bout of insanity. Jupp had to play however as the party were
down to 11 men, not trusted to keep wicket, John Shelby stood in.The top scorer of the England team I hear you ask? ... The insane Jupp
with 63!
Notts professional bowler Alfred Shaw bowled the
first ball bowled in test cricket at 1:05pm on March 15th 1877, Charles
Bannerman faced it for Australia. Bannerman scored the first run off the second
ball. Bannerman then went on to score the first century in Test cricket, and the
only one of his career. Australia's batting was unimpressive and when Bannerman
retired hurt he had scored 165 from a total of 240 and final total of 245.
England were then dismissed for 196, William Midwinter taking 5 for 78.
Bannerman's innings is remarkable in that he scored 67.3% of his sides total, a
record that still stands today. In the second innings, things looked better for
the touring side after bowling Australia out for 104 runs, leaving England to
score 153 to win the match. However England's batting failed and Australia won
the first ever test match by 45 runs.
After three country matches England
returned to Melbourne to play a return match against a strengthened Australia
side. Many gamblers claimed that the first test was fixed to attract spectators
back to watch the second test and see if England could 'do better'. These claims
were given more strength when England comfortably beat Australia by 4 wickets.
An interesting fact from this match - players from Yorkshire scored most of the
runs, 329 of England's 383, a percentage of 85.9.
Calvin
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