James May's Top Toys
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James May's Top Toys
''James May's Top Toys'' is a BBC documentary in which James May explored and celebrated his favourite toys, including Etch-A-Sketch, Airfix model aeroplanes, Lego, Meccano, Top Trumps, Scalextric, model cars, and Hornby model trains. The show included May dropping a parachuted Action Man from a helicopter after an actor named George Huxley dropped it from a window, proving the parachute did not work. Further exploits had May shooting the Action Man figure with an AR-15 type semi-automatic rifle in .22 lr, thereafter referring to the toy as "Killed-in-Action Man". May also constructed an Airfix model of the battleship '' Bismarck''. Upon completion, he took it out on a boating lake and shot at it with an air rifle, while pretending to be a British seaman firing a salvo at the battleship. In the feature of the Etch-A-Sketch, Rose Pipette of The Pipettes is one of the students "etching" May on the toy. A spin off of the show, '' James May: My Sisters' Top Toys'', came on 23 Dece ...
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James May
James Daniel May (born 16 January 1963) is an English television presenter and journalist. He is best known as a co-presenter of the motoring programme ''Top Gear (2002 TV series), Top Gear'' alongside Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond from 2003 until 2015. He also served as a director of the production company W. Chump & Sons, which has since ceased operating. He is a co-presenter of the television series ''The Grand Tour'' for Amazon Prime Video, alongside his former ''Top Gear'' colleagues, Clarkson and Hammond, as well as ''Top Gear's'' former executive producer Andy Wilman. May has presented other programmes on themes including science and technology, toys, wine culture, and the plight of manliness in modern times. He wrote a weekly column for ''The Daily Telegraph''s motoring section from 2003 to 2011. Early life James Daniel May was born in Bristol, the son of aluminium factory manager James May and his wife Kathleen. He was one of four children; he has two sisters ...
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Semi-automatic Rifle
A semi-automatic rifle is an autoloading rifle that fires a single cartridge with each pull of the trigger, and uses part of the fired cartridge's energy to eject the case and load another cartridge into the chamber. For comparison, a bolt-action rifle requires the user to cycle the bolt manually before they can fire a second time, and a fully automatic rifle fires continuously until the trigger is released. History The first design of a recoil-operated semi-automatic rifle is attributed to Ferdinand Mannlicher, who unveiled the design in 1885 based on work begun in 1883. Other non-gas operated semi-automatic models were the Model 85 and Mannlicher Models 91, 93 and 95 rifles. The designs were deeply flawed and never made past the conceptual/prototype stage due to issues inherent to the black powder used in their cartridges (based around the Austrian 11×58mmR M/77), such as insufficient velocity and excessive fouling; automatic firearms would only become feasible after smoke ...
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James May's Toy Stories
''James May's Toy Stories'' is a UK documentary television series created and presented by James May, and produced by Plum Pictures for the BBC. The programme focused on bringing some of the most notable toys conceived in the past into the modern era to a "new generation of children", by putting each toy into a complex, large-scale project involving the nature of the toy. The projects, often ambitious, required an extensive team of experts, and in some cases required a large group of volunteers to help achieve the project's goal. The programme was originally commissioned for BBC Two as a six-episode series for 2009, between 27 October to 25 December, but later received four specials after the series concluded – one in June 2011 and three more for the Christmas broadcast schedules between 2012 and 2014. Format The focus of the documentary was on six notable toys during the original series of episodes, including their history, each of which were chosen to see if they could be p ...
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My Sisters' Top Toys
My or MY may refer to: Arts and entertainment * My (radio station), a Malaysian radio station * Little My, a fictional character in the Moomins universe * ''My'' (album), by Edyta Górniak * ''My'' (EP), by Cho Mi-yeon Business * Marketing year, variable period * Model year, product identifier Transport * Motoryacht * Motor Yacht, a name prefix for merchant vessels * Midwest Airlines (Egypt), IATA airline designation * MAXjet Airways, United States, defunct IATA airline designation Other uses * ''My'', the genitive form of the English pronoun ''I'' * Malaysia, ISO 3166-1 country code ** .my, the country-code top level domain (ccTLD) * Burmese language (ISO 639 alpha-2) * Megalithic Yard, a hypothesised, prehistoric unit of length * Million years See also * MyTV (other) * µ ("mu"), a letter of the Greek alphabet * Mi (other) * Me (other) * Myself (other) ''Myself'' is a reflexive pronoun in English. Myself may also refer ...
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The Pipettes
The Pipettes were a British indie pop girl group formed in 2003 in Brighton by Robert "Monster Bobby" Barry. The group has released two albums, '' We Are The Pipettes'', and '' Earth vs. The Pipettes'' and released numerous singles to support it; the most successful being "Pull Shapes" which peaked at No. 26 in the UK Singles Chart. The group was active from 2003 to 2011. The group was originally composed of Julia Clarke-Lowes, Rose Elinor Dougall and Rebecca Stephens. At the time of their debut album Clarke-Lowes had been replaced by Gwenno Saunders. In 2008, Dougall and Stephens also left the group. By 2010, the line-up consisted of Gwenno Saunders and her sister Ani. Their album ''Earth vs. The Pipettes'' was released on 6 October 2010 in the UK. The female members were backed by an all-male band, The Cassettes, which included Monster Bobby, brothers Jon and Seb Falcone, and Alex White. Overview Formation–2007 The Pipettes were formed in mid-2003 by singer-song ...
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Rose Pipette
Rose Elinor Dougall (born 13 March 1986) is an English singer, songwriter and musician. She was a member of The Pipettes and has performed with Mark Ronson. She also performs and records as a solo artist. Career Dougall joined The Pipettes in 2003 after being introduced to the initial line-up by Monster Bobby at The Basketmakers pub in Brighton. With The Pipettes, Dougall took lead vocals on the singles "Judy" and "Dirty Mind". During her time with The Pipettes, she also provided guest vocals for The Young Playthings, Brakes and Dr Colossus. On 18 April 2008, it was announced in a blog post on the band's Myspace that Dougall and bandmate Rebecca Stephens had amicably left the band "to pursue other musical projects". After her departure from The Pipettes, Dougall pursued a solo career. Her debut 7" "Another Version Of Pop Song" received praise from many quarters. Her second single, "Start/Stop/Synchro" was favorably reviewed in publications such as the ''NME'', Pitchfork Media, ...
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Air Rifle
An air gun or airgun is a gun that fires projectiles pneumatically with compressed air or other gases that are mechanically pressurized ''without'' involving any chemical reactions, in contrast to a firearm, which pressurizes gases ''chemically'' via oxidation of combustible propellants that generates propulsive energy by breaking molecular bonds. Air guns come in both long gun (air rifle) and handgun (air pistol) forms. Both types typically propel metallic projectiles that are either diabolo-shaped pellets or spherical shots called BBs, although in recent years Minié ball-shaped cylindro-conoidal projectiles called slugs are gaining more popularity. Certain types of air guns (usually air rifles) may also launch fin-stabilized projectile such as darts (e.g., tranquilizer guns) or hollow-shaft arrows (so-called "airbows"). The first air guns were developed as early as the 16th century, and have since been used in hunting, shooting sport and even in warfare. There ...
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German Battleship Bismarck
''Bismarck'' was the first of two s built for Nazi Germany's . Named after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1936 and launched in February 1939. Work was completed in August 1940, when she was commissioned into the German fleet. ''Bismarck'' and her sister ship were the largest battleships ever built by Germany, and two of the largest built by any European power. In the course of the warship's eight-month career, ''Bismarck'' conducted only one offensive operation that lasted 8 days in May 1941, codenamed . The ship, along with the heavy cruiser , was to break into the Atlantic Ocean and raid Allied shipping from North America to Great Britain. The two ships were detected several times off Scandinavia, and British naval units were deployed to block their route. At the Battle of the Denmark Strait, the battlecruiser initially engaged ''Prinz Eugen'', probably by mistake, while engaged ''Bismarck''. In the en ...
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22 Lr
The .22 Long Rifle or simply .22 LR or 22 (metric designation: 5.6×15mmR) is a long-established variety of .22 caliber rimfire ammunition originating from the United States. It is used in a wide range of rifles, pistols, revolvers, smoothbore shotguns, and submachine guns. In terms of units sold it is by far the most common ammunition in the world today. Common uses include hunting and shooting sports. Ammunition produced in .22 Long Rifle is effective at short ranges, has little recoil, and is cheap to purchase, making it ideal for training. History American firearms manufacturer J. Stevens Arms & Tool Company introduced the .22 Long Rifle cartridge in 1887. The round owes its origin to the .22 BB Cap of 1845 and the .22 Short of 1857. It combined the case of the .22 Long of 1871 with a bullet, giving it a longer overall length, a higher muzzle velocity and superior performance as a hunting and target round, rendering the .22 Extra Long cartridges obsolete. The .22 LR ...
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AR-15
An AR-15-style rifle is any lightweight semi-automatic rifle based on the Colt AR-15 design. The original ArmaLite AR-15 is a scaled-down derivative of Eugene Stoner's ArmaLite AR-10 design. The then Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation division ArmaLite sold the patent and trademarks to Colt's Manufacturing Company in 1959. After most of Colt's patents for the Colt AR-15 expired in 1977, many firearm manufacturers began to produce copies of the Colt AR-15 under various names. While the patents are expired, Colt retained the trademark of the AR-15 and is the sole manufacturer able to label their firearms as ''AR-15''. The "AR" in Colt AR-15 stands for "ArmaLite Rifle", not " assault rifle". The Federal Assault Weapons Ban restricted the sale of the Colt AR-15 and some derivatives in the United States from 1994 to 2004, although it did not affect rifles with fewer listed features. After the term modern sporting rifles was coined in 2009 by the US National Shooting Sports F ...
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BBC Two
BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio channels, it is funded by the television licence, and is therefore free of commercial advertising. It is a comparatively well-funded public-service network, regularly attaining a much higher audience share than most public-service networks worldwide. Originally styled BBC2, it was the third British television station to be launched (starting on 21 April 1964), and from 1 July 1967, Europe's first television channel to broadcast regularly in colour. It was envisaged as a home for less mainstream and more ambitious programming, and while this tendency has continued to date, most special-interest programmes of a kind previously broadcast on BBC Two, for example the BBC Proms, no ...
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Action Man
Action Man is an action figure launched in Britain in 1966 by Palitoy as a licensed copy of Hasbro's American "movable fighting man", G.I. Joe. Action Man was originally produced and sold in the United Kingdom and Australia by Palitoy Ltd of Coalville, Leicestershire from 1966 until 1984. Palitoy also offered sub-licences to toy manufacturers in other markets. The figure and accessories were originally based on the Hasbro (US) 1964 G.I. Joe figure (for 1966–1969 production). Hasbro's G.I. Joe figure was patented in 1966. Even the specific method of attaching the appendages was patented as a "Connection for Use in Toy Figures". The first Action Man figures were ''Action Soldier'', ''Action Sailor'' and ''Action Pilot''. All were available in the four original hair colours: Blonde, Auburn, Brown and Black. They were accompanied by outfits depicting United States Forces of World War II and the Korean War. From 1970 to 1984, the basic boxed figures and accompanying uniforms and ac ...
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