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The Long Banana Skin
''The Long Banana Skin'' is the first of three autobiographies by Michael Bentine, comedy entertainer, particularly known as a member of The Goons and for his television shows ''It's a Square World''. It covers his life and entertainment career up to 1975. Subsequent autobiographical books are ''The Door Marked Summer'' (1981), and ''The Reluctant Jester'' (1992). The book is written in Bentine's witty and humane style and covers his early life growing up in Folkestone as well as his father's and his, interest in psychic phenomena. The war years are covered form his attempts at joining the Royal Air Force and his subsequent service as Intelligence Officer on a Polish Wellington squadron, to his time with the 2nd Tactical Air Force (2nd TAF) in Europe and his experiences of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Post war the book covers his and his wife Clementina's trip to the United States and Australia and his work on ''The Goon Show'' and subsequent television ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Long Banana Skin
''The Long Banana Skin'' is the first of three autobiographies by Michael Bentine, comedy entertainer, particularly known as a member of The Goons and for his television shows ''It's a Square World''. It covers his life and entertainment career up to 1975. Subsequent autobiographical books are ''The Door Marked Summer'' (1981), and ''The Reluctant Jester'' (1992). The book is written in Bentine's witty and humane style and covers his early life growing up in Folkestone as well as his father's and his, interest in psychic phenomena. The war years are covered form his attempts at joining the Royal Air Force and his subsequent service as Intelligence Officer on a Polish Wellington squadron, to his time with the 2nd Tactical Air Force (2nd TAF) in Europe and his experiences of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Post war the book covers his and his wife Clementina's trip to the United States and Australia and his work on ''The Goon Show'' and subsequent television ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Bumblies
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archaic pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Junk (ship)
A junk (Chinese: 船, ''chuán'') is a type of Chinese sailing ship with fully battened sails. There are two types of junk in China: northern junk, which developed from Chinese river boats, and southern junk, which developed from Austronesian ships visiting southern Chinese coasts since the 3rd century CE. They continued to evolve in later dynasties and were predominantly used by Chinese traders throughout Southeast Asia. Similar junk sails were also adopted by other East Asian countries, most notably Japan where junks were used as merchant ships to trade goods with China and Southeast Asia. They were found, and in lesser numbers are still found, throughout Southeast Asia and India, but primarily in China. Historically, a Chinese junk could be one of many types of small coastal or river ships, usually serving as a cargo ship, pleasure boat, or houseboat, but also ranging in size up to large ocean-going vessel. Found more broadly today is a growing number of modern recreational j ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Round Shot
A round shot (also called solid shot or simply ball) is a solid spherical projectile without explosive charge, launched from a gun. Its diameter is slightly less than the bore of the barrel from which it is shot. A round shot fired from a large-caliber gun is also called a cannonball. The cast iron cannonball was introduced by a French artillery engineer Samuel J. Besh after 1450; it had the capacity to reduce traditional English castle wall fortifications to rubble. French armories would cast a tubular cannon body in a single piece, and cannonballs took the shape of a sphere initially made from stone material. Advances in gunpowder manufacturing soon led the replacement of stone cannonballs with cast iron ones. Round shot was made in early times from dressed stone, referred to as gunstone (Middle English: ''gunneston''), but by the 17th century, from iron. It was used as the most accurate projectile that could be fired by a smoothbore cannon, used to batter the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
House Of Commons Of The United Kingdom
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The House of Commons is an elected body consisting of 650 members known as members of Parliament (MPs). MPs are elected to represent constituencies by the first-past-the-post system and hold their seats until Parliament is dissolved. The House of Commons of England started to evolve in the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1707 it became the House of Commons of Great Britain after the political union with Scotland, and from 1800 it also became the House of Commons for Ireland after the political union of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, the body became the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland after the independence of the Irish Free State. Under the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, the Lords' power to reject legislation was reduced to a delaying power. The g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amazon River
The Amazon River (, ; es, Río Amazonas, pt, Rio Amazonas) in South America is the largest river by discharge volume of water in the world, and the disputed longest river system in the world in comparison to the Nile. The headwaters of the Apurímac River on Nevado Mismi had been considered for nearly a century as the Amazon basin's most distant source, until a 2014 study found it to be the headwaters of the Mantaro River on the Cordillera Rumi Cruz in Peru. The Mantaro and Apurímac rivers join, and with other tributaries form the Ucayali River, which in turn meets the Marañón River upstream of Iquitos, Peru, forming what countries other than Brazil consider to be the main stem of the Amazon. Brazilians call this section the Solimões River above its confluence with the Rio Negro forming what Brazilians call the Amazon at the Meeting of Waters ( pt, Encontro das Águas) at Manaus, the largest city on the river. The Amazon River has an average discharge of about – ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hovercraft
A hovercraft, also known as an air-cushion vehicle or ACV, is an amphibious Craft (vehicle), craft capable of travelling over land, water, mud, ice, and other surfaces. Hovercraft use blowers to produce a large volume of air below the hull, or air cushion, that is slightly above atmospheric pressure. The pressure difference between the higher pressure air below the hull and lower pressure ambient air above it produces lift, which causes the hull to float above the running surface. For stability reasons, the air is typically blown through slots or holes around the outside of a disk- or oval-shaped platform, giving most hovercraft a characteristic rounded-rectangle shape. The first practical design for hovercraft was derived from a British invention in the 1950s. They are now used throughout the world as specialised transports in disaster relief, coastguard, military and survey applications, as well as for sport or passenger service. Very large versions have been used to t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chamber Pot
A chamber pot is a portable toilet, meant for nocturnal use in the bedroom. It was common in many cultures before the advent of indoor plumbing and flushing toilets. Names and etymology "Chamber" is an older term for bedroom. The chamber pot is also known as a , a jerry, a guzunder, a po (possibly from french: pot de chambre), a potty pot, a potty, a thunder pot or a thunder mug. It was also known as a chamber utensil or bedroom ware. History Chamber pots were used in ancient Greece at least since the 6th century BC and were known under different names: (''amis''), (''ouranē'') and (''ourētris'', from - ''ouron'', "urine"), / (''skōramis''), (''chernibion''). The introduction of indoor flush toilets started to displace chamber pots in the 19th century, but they remained common until the mid-20th century. The alternative to using the chamber pot was a trip to the outhouse. In China, the chamber pot (便壶 (biàn hú) was common. A wealthy salt merchant in the city ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Bentine's Potty Time
''Michael Bentine's Potty Time'' was a British children's show, written by and starring Michael Bentine, and directed and produced by Leon Thau for Thames Television on ITV. It ran from 1973 to 1980. Bentine had introduced The Potties on a BBC show ''Michael Bentine Time'' a year earlier.''Radio Times'' 15 Sept - 8 Dec 1972 The episodes consisted largely of bearded puppets (called "Potties"), comically re-enacting famous historical situations. The Potties' faces were always obscured by facial hair, with only their noses protruding. They were operated from beneath and had two distinct sizes - approximately two feet (60 cm) and one foot (30 cm) tall. All of the Potty characters were designed by Bentine, who also provided all of their voices. Their operators were from The Barry Smith Theatre of Puppets. The title 'Potty Time' is a humorous double entendre also referring to the toilet training of infants - a 'potty' being slang for a child's chamber pot. In 2001 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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