On 3rd July 1924 Clarence Birdseye founded “the General Seafood Company” later to become “Birdseye Frozen Foods”. As a young scientist working in the Arctic on behalf of the US Government Clarence Birdseye wasn’t surprised to note that freshly caught fish placed on the ice and exposed to the wind, immediately froze solid. What [...]
On 1st July 1997 the crown colony of Hong Kong officially reverted to Chinese sovereignty, ending 156 years of British rule. The island of Hong Kong held little more than a few fishermen until the arrival of Europeans in the 19th century. British merchants had been exporting opium to China in exchange for Chinese goods, [...]
On 28 June 1790, the Forth and Clyde Canal opened. The short neck of land between the Irish and North Seas had been identified as early as the 1660s as the ideal place for a canal but it was not until economic and social conditions were right a century later that the work on what [...]
On the 27th July 1949 the world’s first commercial jet airliner, the De Haviland Comet, took off on its maiden flight. The pilot was de Havilland Chief Test Pilot John Cunningham, a famous wartime fighter pilot, who commented: “I assumed that it would change aviation, and so it has proved. It was a bit like [...]
For more than 30 years, Canada and the US tried to come to an agreement to build a huge navigational channel linking the Atlantic Ocean to all five Great Lakes. This seaway, made up of a system of canals, locks, and dredged waterways, extends a distance of nearly 2,500 miles, from the Atlantic Ocean through [...]
On 25th June 1950 North Korea invaded South Korea at several points along the two countries’ joint border. Today the state of war still exists as South Korea has still not signed the Armistice. Korea had been divided since the end of the Second World War and both sides had engaged in sabre rattling since then. [...]
On June 24th 1314 the Scottish army led by Robert the Bruce beat Edward II of England at the Battle of Bannockburn. Many people only know the history of the battle, and indeed of the Scottish struggle for independence, from films and popular songs. Hollywood has never been strong on historical fact as Mel Gibson’s [...]
On 23rd June 0930 the Icelandic parliament (the Althing) first sat making it the oldest parliament in the world. However it has not opeerated continuoulsy which is why the Isle of Man, or Manx, Parliament, (the Tynwald) is the oldest parliament still existing having been founded 979. The Althing’s establishment, as an outdoor assembly held [...]
I was in London on business last week and on Wednesday evening, having arrived late at my hotel I decided to have a meal in a small Indian Restaurant not far from the House of Commons. As is common in many such establishments the tables are close together. When I had settled down and ordered [...]
