The early 20th Century design of a then new type of ship, featuring huge heavy gun turrets and steam turbine engines, launched in 1905 and known as the Dreadnought, sparked a major naval arms race which eventually resulted in possibly the greatest class of Battleship, known as the Iowa Class.
The original Dreadnought was a design built for the UK's Royal Navy, but eventually the term became Battleship, which was the class of Warship which denoted the power of any of the world's naval forces. Certain Naval treaties of the 1920-30 period were designed to limit the numbers of Battleships, though not research and development, which resulted in a number of distinctive types of ship by World War 2. Although by this time the Battleship was being superseded by the Aircraft Carrier. Even in the heyday of these ships, they needed at least some protection with other ships involved, as they could always be sunk in a variety of ways, with a variety of mines, torpedoes and various bombs and with a new German WW2 innovation, the Fritz X, a guided missile/bomb.
The US Navy with foresight looking to the potential future of difficulties in the Pacific waters decided upon a new design upon the old theme of the Battleship to deal with the threat of fast Capital ships. The original order was for six ships, four of which were built, the remaining two cancelled.
Their main purpose was to serve as fast escorts, which they did through WW2 and later in lesser but important roles in Korea, Vietnam and the operation of Desert Storm.
To this day all four ships still exist as floating museums.
A large round and roughly carved stone ball has been discovered by a group of archaeologists working on a "dig" at Hay Castle, in the county of Powys Wales.
The Ball, about a foot wide and four and a half stone in weight, was found around fifteen inches deep at the East of the site. It is thought the boulder would have been suitable ammunition for the medieval catapult commonly known as a Trebuchet, And such balls were used in siege warfare throughout Britain, from the year 1217 AD There have been a number of occasions when a siege was conducted at Hay and possibly the stone could easily have been used in The Baron's War 1263 - 1266
The Trebuchet was a favoured weapon of Edward l 1238 - 1307 and employed at the siege of Sterling in Scotland.
Interestingly by the order of none other than Adolf Hitler, saw the creation of the Volks-Wagen Beetle, the People's Car. The task of designing the now iconic vehicle befell the engineer Ferdinand Porsche who was told to design and produce a car for the German people which would be inexpensive to purchase and cost effective to run. From the first fledgling production to a total of 21 million Bettles being produced.and sold worldwide, it now appears the car has come to the end of it's long and consistent journey.
The Beetle seems to have lost much of it's popularity in Europe after the introduction of the VW Golf in the 1970's but have enjoyed an almost second life in Latin America. Only now is production finally at a close, with the final factory line in Mexico switching to other popular VW cars.
The reign of the English King Henry VIII saw the end of the power of the Monastic Order. It was Henry through the administration of Thomas Cromwell who brought about their demise and seized their great wealth for the Crown in what was understood to be an often violent and bloody campaign.
Now almost five centuries later, the now Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby, is expected to become the Anglican Primate, who will supervise communities of Monks and Nuns with legal recognition of their organisations, when this is completed in the Spring of 2020. Which will reinstate as many as eighty semi-official religious groups back as full members of the Anglican Family.
A recent discovery of a jewel encrusted gold ring, in a farmer's field, at Fulford in Yorkshire, is described as being an "incredible treasure." The ring, found about two years ago by a metal-detector user at the time, had the ring verified as Treasure Trove and both he and the farmer received about £10k each, as a result.
Since then however, the finder has made strenuous efforts to research the item and is convinced the jewel was the property of two of Henry Tudor's six wives; Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard, as in the Hans Holbein 1539 portrait of Anne (above). The marriage was never consummated and was dissolved a year later, by which time Henry had a new fancy in a former lady-in-waiting, Catherine Howard, whom became the King's fifth wife in 1540. The ring is thought to have been given to Catherine by Anne, Catherine later had a lover by the name of Thomas Culpeper. And could possibly have discarded the ring as a show of loyalty to her lover, but lather both Thomas and Catherine were to die in the Tower of London.
The ring is set to go on display at the Yorkshire Museum later this year and although a very interesting story, the supposed account remains very much unproven.
In the late 1970's I was working in a London Bingo Club which had just undergone a substantial period of updating and to relaunch the club we had a few appearances by certain entertainment acts and lesser personalities. Including someone who played tunes on his "£1000 Organ" and a woman who did a rather risque dance with a large python. In one of the upstairs bars, there was someone playing popular songs on the piano, though with some competence, it was little more than background music. The player turned out to be Roger LaVern, formerly keyboard player with the Tornadoes, though at the time he was more well known for his high number of marriages.
LaVern had been part of the Tornados the group formed to play backing music upon certain musical tracks produced and recorded by Joe Meek. Meek is considered to be one of the most influential sound engineers in history.
Meek did his National Service with the Royal Air Force, where he was encouraged to develop an interest in electronics. This was followed by a spell with the Midlands Electricity Board, developing an interest in music production and then progressed to work for a independent radio production company, working upon various projects for Radio Luxembourg.
In 1960 along with William Barrington-Coupe founded Triumph Records, which had some notable success with the record "Angela Jones" by Michael Cox. Triumph was the predecessor to Meek's company "RGM Sound Ltd" at 304 Holloway Road a three floor flat above a leather shop.
Here he set about using his skill to build a record recording studio and it was from here he had a Number One chart success with John Leyton's "Johnny Remember Me" Followed by "Telstar" recorded by the Tornados, a UK and US number one. A third and final major success, a British number one and American number five, The honeycomb's "Have I The Right"
Bletchley Park is probably most famous for the work of Alan Turing and his efforts to break the German code ciphers, important to the outcome of WW ll All personnel and the work carried out there was undertaken in the utmost secrecy. And so little information about the people and their work is actually available in the public domain.
Someone who is known was Mavis Lever, one of several thousand women whom worked at Bletchley, she was assigned to a section run by Dilly Knox and played a key role in deciphering an Italian Naval Operational code. Which in turn led to the Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy victory in 1941 at the battle of Cape Matapan and the destruction of several Italian warships and the virtual end of the Italian Navy as an effective force.
Cape Matapan can hardly be said to be another Midway, far from it, but could have perhaps benefited from a Hollywood perspective, at least it brought to an end Mussolini's dreams of a new Roman Empire.
The actual Naval battle followed a more or less fruitless action off Gavdos, in which there were various attempted engagements and later a night time action, which after some confusion resulted in the loss of three Italian heavy cruisers, which equated to the loss of a cruiser division. Although at the same time the Allied force failed to engage and destroy the battleship Vittorio Veneto.
This Ghost Story was first told to me some years ago by word of mouth and I've enjoyed telling the story upon many occasions since. Although the story is often quoted as being The Croglin Vampire, and told to a more elaborate verse. I've always known the story as being purely a Ghost Story.
There are supposed to be elements of truth in the story, there's a house and a churchyard and the players could well be real, but clearly, other parts of the story are down to your imagination.
The story is set about two-hundred years ago, in the Cumbrian village of Croglin Grange, a dozen or more miles to the south-east of Carlisle. There were two brothers and a sister, there name said to be Cranswell, came to rent a house in the village for the Summer. One night the sister retired to her bedroom which was on the ground floor of their house. There was a light dusk outside and through the window, she became aware of a figure, outside, who slowly approached the house, and as it was a warm evening the window was slightly open and the figure was able to clamber in and sought to attack the young woman. She rushed to the door screaming, which was locked from the inside and struggled to open the lock as the creature now seized her from behind, at last she managed to get the door open as her brothers who were trying to enter the room from the other side rushed in and the intruder made his escape. However, one of the brothers had a pistol and was able to take a shot at the fleeing figure and was sure he'd hit him in the leg.
The next day, the brothers decided to organise a search party and with the help of several other villagers set out to find the intruder. Eventually they entered the nearby Croglin graveyard and were surprised to discover the lid of an old stone tomb had been disturbed and inside there was an old and withered body, but with a fresh gunshot wound on one leg. As a result the horrified villagers removed the corpse from the tomb and it was burnt to ashes and the tomb was completely destroyed in an attempt to remove any trace of the ghost.
