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Jasper Maskelyne
Jasper Maskelyne (29 September 1902 – 15 March 1973) was a British stage magician in the 1930s and 1940s. He was one of an established family of stage magicians, the son of Nevil Maskelyne and a grandson of John Nevil Maskelyne. He is most remembered for his accounts of his work for the British military during the Second World War, in which he claimed to have created large-scale ruses, deception, and camouflage in an effort to defeat the Nazis. Early life Maskelyne was born in Wandsworth, London, England in 1902, to magician Nevil Maskelyne and his wife Ada Mary Ardley. Career Stage magician Maskelyne was a successful stage magician. His 1936 ''Maskelyne's Book of Magic'' describes a range of stage tricks, including sleight of hand, card and rope tricks, and illusions of "mind-reading". In 1937, Maskelyne appeared in a Pathé film, ''The Famous Illusionist'', in which he performed his well-known trick of appearing to swallow razor blades. Wartime service Maskelyne jo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wandsworth
Wandsworth Town () is a district of south London, within the London Borough of Wandsworth southwest of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan The London Plan is the statutory spatial development strategy for the Greater London area in the United Kingdom that is written by the Mayor of London and published by the Greater London Authority. The regional planning document was first pu ... as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. Toponymy Wandsworth takes its name from the River Wandle, which enters the River Thames, Thames at Wandsworth. Wandsworth appears in Domesday Book of 1086 as ''Wandesorde'' and ''Wendelesorde''. This means 'enclosure of (a man named) Waendel', whose name is also lent to the River Wandle. To distinguish it from the London Borough of Wandsworth, and historically from the Wandsworth District (Metropolis), Wandsworth District of the Metropolis and the Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth, which all covered larger areas, it is al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort
Field Marshal John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort, (10 July 1886 – 31 March 1946) was a senior British Army officer. As a young officer during the First World War, he was decorated with the Victoria Cross for his actions during the Battle of the Canal du Nord. During the 1930s he served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (the professional head of the British Army). He is best known for commanding the British Expeditionary Force that was sent to France in the first year of the Second World War, only to be evacuated from Dunkirk the following year. Gort later served as Governor of Gibraltar and Malta, and High Commissioner for Palestine and Transjordan. Early life and family Vereker was born in London. His mother was Eleanor, Viscountess Gort née Surtees (1857–1933; later Eleanor Benson), who was a daughter of the writer Robert Smith Surtees. Vereker's father was John Gage Prendergast Vereker, 5th Viscount Gort (1849–1902). J. S. S. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was published on Saturday 26 March 2016, leaving only the online edition. The newspaper was controlled by Tony O'Reilly's Irish Independent News & Media from 1997 until it was sold to the Russian oligarch and former KGB Officer Alexander Lebedev in 2010. In 2017, Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel bought a 30% stake in it. The daily edition was named National Newspaper of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. The website and mobile app had a combined monthly reach of 19,826,000 in 2021. History 1986 to 1990 Launched in 1986, the first issue of ''The Independent'' was published on 7 October in broadsheet format.Dennis Griffiths (ed.) ''The Encyclopedia of the British Press, 1422–1992'', London & Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992, p. 330 It was produc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jasper Maskelyne Trip, Nairobi To Cape Town And Back
Jasper, an aggregate of microgranular quartz and/or cryptocrystalline chalcedony and other mineral phases,Kostov, R. I. 2010. Review on the mineralogical systematics of jasper and related rocks. – Archaeometry Workshop, 7, 3, 209-213PDF/ref> is an opaque, impure variety of silica, usually red, yellow, brown or green in color; and rarely blue. The common red color is due to iron(III) inclusions. Jasper breaks with a smooth surface and is used for ornamentation or as a gemstone. It can be highly polished and is used for items such as vases, seals, and snuff boxes. The specific gravity of jasper is typically 2.5 to 2.9. Jaspillite is a banded-iron-formation rock that often has distinctive bands of jasper. Etymology and history The name means "spotted or speckled stone," and is derived via Old French ''jaspre'' (variant of Anglo-Norman ''jaspe'') and Latin ''iaspidem'' (nom. ''iaspis'') from Greek ἴασπις ''iaspis'' (feminine noun), from an Afroasiatic language (cf. Heb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abbassia
Abbassia ( ar, العباسية ) is a neighbourhood in Cairo, Egypt. The Saint Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral, Cairo is located in Abbassia. The medical faculty of Ain Shams University and its affiliate hospital units are located in Abbassia. The Abbassia metro station is located here, as well. History The modern district of Abbassia is named after Abbas Helmy Pasha and was built upon an older Coptic village called p-Sovt em-p-Hoi ( "the wall of the moat") or later Shats ( "the moat") which is a calque on the latter Arabic al-Khandaq ( "the moat"). In 1865 an observatory, principally for meteorological work, was founded at Abbassia, by the Khedive Isma'il Pasha, and maintained continuously there for nearly forty years. The building lay on the boundary between the cultivated Nile Delta and the desert but then with urban encroachment, it was decided in 1904, to move the meteorological work to Helwan. The Observatory at Abbassia was an empty monument until 1952. Abb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helwan
Helwan ( ar, حلوان ', , cop, ϩⲁⲗⲟⲩⲁⲛ, Halouan) is a city in Egypt and part of Greater Cairo, on the bank of the Nile, opposite the ruins of Memphis. Originally a southern suburb of Cairo, it served as the capital of the now defunct Helwan Governorate from April 2008 to April 2011, after which it was re-incorporated into the Cairo Governorate. The ''kism'' of Helwan had a population of 643,327 in the 2006 census.Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, Population and Housing Census 2006, Population distribution by sex, gov: Cairo Retrieved on 2008-04-01. History The Helwan and Isnian cultures of the late |
Middle East Command Camouflage Directorate
The British Middle East Command Camouflage Directorate (also known as the Camouflage Unit or Camouflage Branch) organised major deception operations for Middle East Command in the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War. It provided camouflage during the siege of Tobruk; a dummy railhead at Misheifa, and the largest of all, Operation Bertram, the army-scale deception for the decisive battle of El Alamein in October 1942. The successful deception was praised publicly by Winston Churchill. These operations contributed to victory by diverting enemy attention from real targets to dummy ones, wasting enemy ammunition, preserving vital resources such as the single water desalination plant at Tobruk, and deceiving the enemy as to allied strength and intentions. Operation Bertram may have been the last army-scale physical deception ever to take place, since subsequent major deceptions, including those for the D-Day landings in Normandy, have included or consisted of electronic me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geoffrey Barkas
Geoffrey Barkas (born Geoffrey de Gruchy Barkas, 27 August 1896 – 3 September 1979) was an English film maker active between the world wars. Barkas led the British Middle East Command Camouflage Directorate in the Second World War. His largest "film set" was Operation Bertram, the army-scale deception for the Second Battle of El Alamein, battle of El Alamein in October 1942. Early life Barkas was born in 1896 to parents from Jersey families. His father was Albert Atkin Barkas (b. 1861) and his mother was Anna Julia de Gruchy (b. 1863); both were from St. Helier. In the First World War, he served in the 1915 Gallipoli campaign at Suvla Bay, and then in the later part of the Battle of the Somme in France, where he won a Military Cross. Film Between the wars, Barkas worked on silent films and then feature films, starting as a writer and producer, and then directing his own films such as ''The Manitou Trail'' and ''The Lumberjack'' (1925) and ''The Third Gun'' (1929), the latt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cricket Bat
A cricket bat is a specialised piece of equipment used by batters in the sport of cricket to hit the ball, typically consisting of a cane handle attached to a flat-fronted willow-wood blade. It may also be used by a batter who is making ground to avoid a run out, by holding the bat and touching the ground with it. The length of the bat may be no more than 38 inches (96.5 cm) and the width no more than 4.25 inches (10.8 cm). Its use is first mentioned in 1624. Since 1979, a law change has provided that cricket bats can only be made from wood. Construction The ''blade'' of a cricket bat is a wooden block that is generally flat on the striking face and with a ridge on the reverse (back) which concentrates wood in the middle where the ball is generally hit. The bat is traditionally made from willow wood, specifically from a variety of white willow called cricket bat willow (''Salix alba'' var. ''caerulea''), treated with raw (unboiled) linseed oil, which has a protecti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dudley Clarke
Brigadier Dudley Wrangel Clarke, ( – ) was an officer in the British Army, known as a pioneer of military deception operations during the Second World War. His ideas for combining fictional orders of battle, visual deception and double agents helped define Allied deception strategy during the war, for which he has been referred to as "the greatest British deceiver of WW2". Clarke was also instrumental in the founding of three famous military units, namely the British Commandos, the Special Air Service and the US Rangers. Born in Johannesburg and brought up near London, Clarke joined the Royal Artillery as an officer in 1916 but transferred to the Royal Flying Corps after finding he was too young to fight in France. He spent the First World War learning to fly, first in Reading and then Egypt. Clarke returned to the Royal Artillery in 1919 and had a varied career doing intelligence work in the Middle East. In 1936 he was posted to Palestine, where he helped organise the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pillbox (military)
A pillbox is a type of blockhouse, or concrete dug-in guard-post, normally equipped with loopholes through which defenders can fire weapons. It is in effect a trench firing step, hardened to protect against small-arms fire and grenades, and raised to improve the field of fire. The modern concrete pillbox originated on the Western Front of World War I, in the German Army in 1916. Etymology The origin of the term is disputed. It has been widely assumed to be a jocular reference to the perceived similarity of the fortifications to the cylindrical and hexagonal boxes in which medical pills were once sold; also, the first German concrete pillboxes discovered by the Allies in Belgium were so small and light that they were easily tilted or turned upside down by the nearby explosion of even medium (240mm) shells. However, it seems more likely that it originally alluded to pillar boxes, with a comparison being drawn between the loophole on the pillbox and the letter-slot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julian Trevelyan
Julian Otto Trevelyan (20 February 1910 – 12 July 1988) was an English artist and poet. Early life Trevelyan was the only child to survive to adulthood of Robert Calverley Trevelyan and his wife Elizabeth van der Hoeven. His grandfather was the liberal politician Sir George Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet, and his uncle the historian George Macaulay Trevelyan; he is the great-uncle of his namesake, Julian Trevelyan the pianist. Julian Trevelyan was educated at Bedales School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read English Literature. Artistic career He moved to Paris to become an artist, enrolling at Atelier Dix-Sept, Stanley William Hayter's engraving school, where he learned etching. He worked alongside artists including Max Ernst, Oskar Kokoschka, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. In 1935, Trevelyan bought Durham Wharf, beside the river Thames in Hammersmith, London. This became his home and studio for the rest of his life and was a source of artistic inspiration to him. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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