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Blaster Bates
Blaster Bates was the name used by Derek Macintosh Bates (5 February 1923 – 1 September 2006), an English explosives and demolition expert and raconteur, who was born in Crewe. He made a series of sound recordings from the 1960s to 1980s, recounting bizarre and funny experiences from his long career, and tales of his hobbies of motorcycling, hunting and shooting. He was much in demand as an after-dinner speaker. His tales often featured coarse language. Once, for instance, he was hired to clear out a farm's septic tank using explosives, an episode Bates described as "The Shower of Shit Over Cheshire". On another occasion he surprised a young couple in what he described as 'a compromising position' whilst clearing trees for the Oulton Park racing circuit, an incident which gave the Knickerbrook corner its name. Bates served with the Royal Air Force during the Second World War as a Handley Page Halifax bomber pilot, and then learned his explosives skills as a bomb disposa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crewe
Crewe () is a railway town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. The Crewe built-up area had a total population of 75,556 in 2011, which also covers parts of the adjacent civil parishes of Willaston, Shavington cum Gresty and Wistaston. Crewe is perhaps best known as a large railway junction and home to Crewe Works; for many years, it was a major railway engineering facility for manufacturing and overhauling locomotives, but now much reduced in size. From 1946 until 2002, it was also the home of Rolls-Royce motor car production. The Pyms Lane factory on the west of the town now exclusively produces Bentley motor cars. Crewe is north of London, south of Manchester city centre, and south of Liverpool city centre. History Medieval The name derives from an Old Welsh word ''criu'', meaning 'weir' or 'crossing'. The earliest record is in the Domesday Book, where it is written as ''Creu''. Modern Until the Grand Junction Railw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Detonator
A detonator, frequently a blasting cap, is a device used to trigger an explosive device. Detonators can be chemically, mechanically, or electrically initiated, the last two being the most common. The commercial use of explosives uses electrical detonators or the capped fuse which is a length of safety fuse to which an ordinary detonator has been joined. Many detonators' primary explosive is a material called ASA compound. This compound is formed from lead azide, lead styphnate and aluminium and is pressed into place above the base charge, usually TNT or tetryl in military detonators and PETN in commercial detonators. Other materials such as DDNP (diazo dinitro phenol) are also used as the primary charge to reduce the amount of lead emitted into the atmosphere by mining and quarrying operations. Old detonators used mercury fulminate as the primary, often mixed with potassium chlorate to yield better performance. A blasting cap is a small sensitive primary explosive device ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stockport
Stockport is a town and borough in Greater Manchester, England, south-east of Manchester, south-west of Ashton-under-Lyne and north of Macclesfield. The River Goyt and Tame merge to create the River Mersey here. Most of the town is within the boundaries of the historic county of Cheshire, with the area north of the Mersey in the historic county of Lancashire. Stockport in the 16th century was a small town entirely on the south bank of the Mersey, known for the cultivation of hemp and manufacture of rope. In the 18th century, it had one of the first mechanised silk factories in the British Isles. Stockport's predominant industries of the 19th century were the cotton and allied industries. It was also at the centre of the country's hatting industry, which by 1884 was exporting more than six million hats a year; the last hat works in Stockport closed in 1997. Dominating the western approaches to the town is Stockport Viaduct. Built in 1840, its 27 brick arches carry the mai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Outside Broadcast
Outside broadcasting (OB) is the electronic field production (EFP) of television or radio programmes (typically to cover television news and sports television events) from a mobile remote broadcast television studio. Professional video camera and microphone signals come into the production truck for processing, recording and possibly transmission. Some outside broadcasts use a mobile production control room (PCR) inside a production truck. History Outside radio broadcasts have been taking place since the early 1920s and television ones since the late 1920s. The first large-scale outside broadcast was the televising of the Coronation of George VI and Elizabeth in May 1937, done by the BBC's first Outside Broadcast truck, MCR 1 (short for Mobile Control Room). After the Second World War, the first notable outside broadcast was of the 1948 Summer Olympics. The Coronation of Elizabeth II followed in 1953, with 21 cameras being used to cover the event. In December 1963 i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fivepenny Piece
The Fivepenny Piece were a five-piece band, originally formed in 1967 in the area of East Lancashire around Ashton-under-Lyne and nearby Stalybridge in Tameside. The band met and performed on Wednesday nights at Ashton's Broadoak Hotel, which gave them their original name The Wednesday Folk. Career Their break came when they entered and won the Granada Television talent show ''New Faces'' in 1968 (not to be confused with ATV talent show ''New Faces'' which didn't begin until 1973), which led to a contract with the Noel Gay agency, a recording contract with EMI, and their new name. Many of their mostly self-penned songs reflected their roots, using Lancashire dialect, with references to the mining and weaving trades, the mills and factories, and the Lancashire characters who lived in the area. But there was another side to the group's music, perhaps best described as more pop-oriented. The band's music is most often categorised as folk, though many feel that is too limiting ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nationwide (TV Series)
} ''Nationwide'' was a BBC current affairs television programme which ran from 9 September 1969 until 5 August 1983. Originally broadcast on BBC 1 from Tuesday to Thursday, and then each weekday from 1972, it followed the early evening news, and included the regional opt-out news programmes. Outline It followed a magazine format, combining regional news, political analysis and discussion with consumer affairs, light entertainment and sports reporting. It began on 9 September 1969, running between Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:00pm, before being extended to five days a week in 1972. From 1976 until 1981, the start time was 5:55pm. The final edition was broadcast on 5 August 1983 and, the following October, it was replaced by ''Sixty Minutes''. The long-running ''Watchdog'' programme began as a ''Nationwide'' feature. The light entertainment was quite similar in tone to ''That's Life!'', with eccentric stories such as a skateboarding duck and men who claimed that they could walk on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC North West Tonight
''BBC North West Tonight'' is the BBC's regional television news programme covering North West England and the Isle of Man. Produced by BBC North West, the programme airs at 1.30pm (as ''North West Today''), 6.30pm and 10.30pm, with shorter bulletins during ''BBC Breakfast'' and at the weekends. The programme is broadcast from the BBC's MediaCityUK studios at Salford Quays, with district newsrooms based in Liverpool, Blackburn and Chester. BBC North West region The BBC North West region covers Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, northwestern Derbyshire, southern Cumbria, western North Yorkshire, western West Yorkshire and the Isle of Man. The programme can be watched in any part of the United Kingdom (and Europe) from Astra 1N on Freesat channel 955 and Sky channel 958. The latest edition of ''BBC North West Tonight'' is also available to watch on BBC iPlayer for 24 hours, like the BBC's other television news bulletins. History BBC television news from Manch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Whicker
Alan Donald Whicker (2 August 1921 – 12 July 2013) was a British journalist and television presenter and broadcaster. His career spanned almost 60 years, during which time he presented the documentary television programme ''Whicker's World'' for over 30 years. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2005 for services to broadcasting. Background Whicker was born to British parents in Cairo, Egypt, in 1921. When he was three years old his father Charles became seriously ill and the family moved to Richmond in Surrey, where he and his mother remained after the death of his father. He attended Haberdashers' Aske's Boys School, where he excelled at cross-country running. During the Second World War he was commissioned as an officer in the Devonshire Regiment of the British Army. He then joined the British Army's Army Film and Photographic Unit in Italy in 1943, filming at Anzio and meeting such influential figures as Field Marshal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irish Republican Army
The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a name used by various paramilitary organisations in Ireland throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Organisations by this name have been dedicated to irredentism through Irish republicanism, the belief that all of Ireland should be an independent republic free from British rule. The original Irish Republican Army (1919–1922), often now referred to as the "old IRA", was raised in 1917 from members of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army later reinforced by Irishmen formerly in the British Army in World War I, who returned to Ireland to fight against Britain in the Irish War of Independence. In Irish law, this IRA was the army of the revolutionary Irish Republic as declared by its parliament, Dáil Éireann, in 1919. In the century that followed, the original IRA was reorganised, changed and split on multiple occasions, to such a degree that many subsequent paramilitary organisations have been known by that title – most not ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 census of Ireland, 2016 census it had a population of 1,173,179, while the preliminary results of the 2022 census of Ireland, 2022 census recorded that County Dublin as a whole had a population of 1,450,701, and that the population of the Greater Dublin Area was over 2 million, or roughly 40% of the Republic of Ireland's total population. A settlement was established in the area by the Gaels during or before the 7th century, followed by the Vikings. As the Kings of Dublin, Kingdom of Dublin grew, it became Ireland's principal settlement by the 12th century Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. The city expanded rapidly from the 17th century and was briefly the second largest in the British Empire and sixt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nelson's Pillar
Nelson's Pillar (also known as the Nelson Pillar or simply the Pillar) was a large granite column capped by a statue of Horatio Nelson, built in the centre of what was then Sackville Street (later renamed O'Connell Street) in Dublin, Ireland. Completed in 1809 when Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, it survived until March 1966, when it was severely damaged by explosives planted by Irish republicans. Its remnants were later destroyed by the Irish Army. The decision to build the monument was taken by Dublin Corporation in the euphoria following Nelson's victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The original design by William Wilkins was greatly modified by Francis Johnston, on grounds of cost. The statue was sculpted by Thomas Kirk. From its opening on 29 October 1809 the Pillar was a popular tourist attraction, but provoked aesthetic and political controversy from the outset. A prominent city centre monument honouring an Englishman rankled as Irish nationalist sentim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IMI Plc
IMI plc (), formerly Imperial Metal Industries, is a British-based engineering company headquartered in Birmingham, England. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. History The company was founded by Scottish entrepreneur George Kynoch who opened a percussion cap factory in Witton, West Midlands in 1862, trading as ''Kynoch''. The business soon diversified, manufacturing goods ranging from soap and bicycle components to non-ferrous metals, but by the early 20th century it had developed particular expertise in metallurgy. After World War I it merged with Nobel Industries. In 1926 the company acquired Eley Brothers, an ammunition business. The company, by then known as ''Nobel Explosives'', was one of the four businesses that merged in 1927 to create Imperial Chemical Industries. The Witton site became the head office of ICI Metals. During the Second World War the Witton site was used for the development and production of uranium for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
