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Edward Brooke-Hitching
Edward Brooke-Hitching is an English author, and a writer and researcher for the BBC panel show QI, as a member of the team known as the "QI Elves". He is the son of the rare book dealer Franklin Brooke-Hitching and a descendant of the printer and bibliographer William Blades, who wrote the history of book preservation ''The Enemies of Books''. His ''Fox Tossing, Octopus Wrestling and Other Forgotten Sports'' described 90 obsolete pastimes and ''The Spectators reviewer said "A book like this, the result of enormously diligent library ferreting, doesn't have any pressing reason to exist, but I am glad it does. Its pointlessness is its pleasure." It described sports including fox tossing, octopus wrestling and ski ballet. His ''The Phantom Atlas'' describes places which appear on maps but do not exist: the ''Times'' reviewer says that it "shows how places that aren’t there can endure, sometimes for centuries, once a map-maker has inked them in". ''The Sky Atlas'' was shortlist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
:Template:Infobox Writer/doc
Infobox writer may be used to summarize information about a person who is a writer/author (includes screenwriters). If the writer-specific fields here are not needed, consider using the more general ; other infoboxes there can be found in :People and person infobox templates. This template may also be used as a module (or sub-template) of ; see WikiProject Infoboxes/embed for guidance on such usage. Syntax The infobox may be added by pasting the template as shown below into an article. All fields are optional. Any unused parameter names can be left blank or omitted. Parameters Please remove any parameters from an article's infobox that are unlikely to be used. All parameters are optional. Unless otherwise specified, if a parameter has multiple values, they should be comma-separated using the template: : which produces: : , language= If any of the individual values contain commas already, add to use semi-colons as separators: : which produces: : , ps ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Herald (Glasgow)
''The Herald'' is a Scottish broadsheet newspaper founded in 1783. ''The Herald'' is the longest running national newspaper in the world and is the eighth oldest daily paper in the world. The title was simplified from ''The Glasgow Herald'' in 1992. Following the closure of the ''Sunday Herald'', the ''Herald on Sunday'' was launched as a Sunday edition on 9 September 2018. History Founding The newspaper was founded by an Edinburgh-born printer called John Mennons in January 1783 as a weekly publication called the ''Glasgow Advertiser''. Mennons' first edition had a global scoop: news of the treaties of Versailles reached Mennons via the Lord Provost of Glasgow just as he was putting the paper together. War had ended with the American colonies, he revealed. ''The Herald'', therefore, is as old as the United States of America, give or take an hour or two. The story was, however, only carried on the back page. Mennons, using the larger of two fonts available to him, put it in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Year Of Birth Missing (living People)
A year or annus is the orbital period of a planetary body, for example, the Earth, moving in its orbit around the Sun. Due to the Earth's axial tilt, the course of a year sees the passing of the seasons, marked by change in weather, the hours of daylight, and, consequently, vegetation and soil fertility. In temperate and subpolar regions around the planet, four seasons are generally recognized: spring, summer, autumn and winter. In tropical and subtropical regions, several geographical sectors do not present defined seasons; but in the seasonal tropics, the annual wet and dry seasons are recognized and tracked. A calendar year is an approximation of the number of days of the Earth's orbital period, as counted in a given calendar. The Gregorian calendar, or modern calendar, presents its calendar year to be either a common year of 365 days or a leap year of 366 days, as do the Julian calendars. For the Gregorian calendar, the average length of the calendar year (the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Book And Manuscript Collectors
English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national identity, an identity and common culture ** English language in England, a variant of the English language spoken in England * English languages (other) * English studies, the study of English language and literature * ''English'', an Amish term for non-Amish, regardless of ethnicity Individuals * English (surname), a list of notable people with the surname ''English'' * People with the given name ** English McConnell (1882–1928), Irish footballer ** English Fisher (1928–2011), American boxing coach ** English Gardner (b. 1992), American track and field sprinter Places United States * English, Indiana, a town * English, Kentucky, an unincorporated community * English, Brazoria County, Texas, an unincorporated community * En ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gregor MacGregor
General Gregor MacGregor (24 December 1786 – 4 December 1845) was a Scottish soldier, adventurer, and confidence trickster who attempted from 1821 to 1837 to draw British and French investors and settlers to "Poyais", a fictional Central American territory that he claimed to rule as "Cazique". Hundreds invested their savings in supposed Poyaisian government bonds and land certificates, while about 250 emigrated to MacGregor's invented country in 1822–23 to find only an untouched jungle; more than half of them died. Seen as a contributory factor to the "Panic of 1825", MacGregor's Poyais scheme has been called one of the most brazen confidence tricks in history. From the Clan Gregor, MacGregor was an officer in the British Army from 1803 to 1810; he served in the Peninsular War. He joined the republican side in the Venezuelan War of Independence in 1812, quickly became a general and, over the next four years, operated against the Spanish on behalf of both Venezuela and its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Museum Of Curiosity
''The Museum of Curiosity'' is a comedy talk show on BBC Radio 4 that was first broadcast on 20 February 2008. It is hosted by John Lloyd (Professor of Ignorance at the University of Buckingham, and later at Solent University). He acts as the head of the (fictional) titular museum, while a panel of three guests – typically a comedian, an author and an academic – each donate to the museum an 'object' that fascinates them. The radio medium ensures that the suggested exhibits can be absolutely anything, limited only by the guests' imaginations. Each series has had a different co-host, under the title of curator of the museum. Bill Bailey acted as co-host of the programme in the first series, before leaving the show after deciding to "retire" from panel games. Sean Lock, Jon Richardson, Dave Gorman, Jimmy Carr, Humphrey Ker, Phill Jupitus, Sarah Millican, Noel Fielding, Jo Brand, Romesh Ranganathan, Sally Phillips, Lee Mack, Bridget Christie, Alice Levine and Holly Walsh hav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasting House, London. The station controller is Mohit Bakaya. Broadcasting throughout the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands on FM, LW and DAB, and on BBC Sounds, it can be received in the eastern counties of Ireland, northern France and Northern Europe. It is available on Freeview, Sky, and Virgin Media. Radio 4 currently reaches over 10 million listeners, making it the UK's second most-popular radio station after Radio 2. BBC Radio 4 broadcasts news programmes such as ''Today'' and ''The World at One'', heralded on air by the Greenwich Time Signal pips or the chimes of Big Ben. The pips are only accurate on FM, LW, and MW; there is a delay on digital radio of three to five seconds and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Really Terrible Orchestra
The Really Terrible Orchestra (RTO) is a British amateur orchestra, founded in 1995 by the Edinburgh-based businessman Peter Stevenson and the author Alexander McCall Smith. The inspiration for Stevenson and McCall Smith was the enjoyment that their children were having with their school orchestras. They decided to look for a local amateur orchestra with which they could enjoy playing music for the fun of it. They could not find such an orchestra, and formed the RTO as a result, with Richard Neville Towle as its conductor. McCall Smith has expressed the low quality of the orchestra's playing very directly: The name was carefully chosen: what it said was what you would get. Aside from their yearly concerts at the Edinburgh Fringe, the orchestra also features in the novel '' The Sunday Philosophy Club'' by Alexander McCall Smith. In the foyer of the Canongate Kirk, an Edinburgh church and their regular venue, the orchestra sells CDs of their performances. In 2005 a documentar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards
The Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards celebrate the best travel writing and travel writers in the world. The awards include the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year and the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing. The Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year was previously called Dolman Best Travel Book Award (2006-2014). The award is named after Edward Stanford and is sponsored by Stanfords, a travel books and map store established in London in 1853. The Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year is one of the two principal annual travel book awards in Britain, and the only one that is open to all writers. The other award is that made each year by the British Guild of Travel Writers, but that is limited to authors who are members of the Guild. The first Dolman award was given in 2006, just two years after the only other travel book award - the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award which ran for 25 years - was abandoned by its sponsor. From its founding th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ski Ballet
Ski ballet is a form of ballet performed on skis. It is very similar to figure skating, combining spins, jumps, and flips in a two-minute routine choreographed to music. It was part of the professional freestyle skiing tours of the 1970s and 1980s and then an official FIS and Olympic discipline until the year 2000. Ski ballet became known as Acroski in the 1990s in an effort to legitimize its place among the competitive ski community, especially to the FIS. It is no longer a part of competitive freestyle skiing. Overview Ski ballet involved a choreographed routine of flips, rolls, leg crossings, jumps, and spins performed on a smooth slope. After the mid-1970s, the routine was performed to music for 90 seconds. For a short period of time (in the 1980s), there were also pair ballet competitions, a variation of ballet where two people performed tricks that not only included spins, jumps, and leg crossing, but also lifts and synchronic movements. A panel of judges scored the perfo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Octopus Wrestling
Octopus wrestling involves a diver grappling with a large octopus in shallow water and dragging it to the surface.Norman, M.D. (2000). Octopus Wrestling. In: ''Cephalopods: A World Guide''. ConchBooks, pp. 217-218. Although it was called "wrestling", it was not wrestling per se, as most octopuses are rather skittish and not aggressive at all unless they are provoked, with most cases of provocation ending with the octopus fleeing. The contestants were usually only searching in holes along rocks in the ocean to grab the head of an octopus. Once a diver caught an octopus he continued to pull until the animal gave up. History An early article on octopus wrestling appeared in a 1949 issue of ''Mechanix Illustrated''. A report from the Toledo Blade said that in 1957, 200 people gathered to watch an octopus wrestling event in the Puget Sound near Tacoma, Washington. A team from Portland, Oregon, won the contest by catching an eighty-pound octopus. Octopus wrestling reached the heig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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