Clipmarks | mickfinn's 'london' clips

Potatrix Anglia and the Hoodies

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 21:36:18 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn
clipper's remarks: As a former London apprentice, I deny all the charges.

They are the symbol of today's disaffected youth but a historian has revealed that the hoodie-wearing yob is not just a modern problem

Professor Robert Bartlett, who is an expert on the Middle Ages, said hooded tops were also the garment of choice for 12th-century juvenile delinquents

The teenage apprentice boys of London were lawless, violent and the scourge of the capital

"They were away from home for seven years with no parental control and they would riot regularly for political and religious reasons,"

The English, who are now among the worst binge-drinkers in Europe, were also renowned as drunks in the Middle Ages

"A surviving 12th-century Latin manuscript refers disapprovingly to 'Potatrix Anglia' - 'England the drunken'," said Prof Bartlett

He will reveal the opening of the North-South divide, with the first recorded case - in 1120 - of a southerner complaining that he is unable to understand the speech of a northerner.

Rare seahorses found in London's Thames

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 21:15:15 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn
clipper's remarks: An increase in plankton due to Climate change and warmer sea temperatures may help explain the seahorses' appearance in the river, according to Shaw.

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

There's something fishy in London, and it's not the city's trademark fish and chips

Short-snouted seahorses have set up residence in the recovering River Thames, conservationists announced today

The fish—pictured above in the London Zoo aquarium—were found in recent surveys that assessed the health of the once heavily polluted river

The discovery of the animal in brackish tidal waters as far upriver as London was kept under wraps by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) until the species had been granted protected status

Conservationists had feared that the bizarrely shaped fish might attract unwanted attention, such as from aquarium-trade collectors

The government declared the Thames biologically dead in the 1950s, and various groups have worked to rehabilitate it for the past two decades

These efforts have led to "a vast improvement" in the Thames' water quality, Shaw said

Seals, dolphins, salmon, and sea lampreys have also been seen swimming in the healthier river

—James Owen

Tags: london, river thames, seahorses

Masai warriors and the London Marathon

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 04:51:22 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn
clipper's remarks: The warriors, who arrive in Britain next week for the race on Sunday April 13, have also been advised not to be too offended by the brief running attire of their fellow competitors in the marathon.

"You will see many people who are wearing only small clothes and you will wonder why they are cold and may think they are being disrespectful.

"This is normal for England, especially when it is sunny or in the evening. However, it is illegal to show certain parts of the body and for this reason it is important that you wear underpants if you are wearing your blankets."

The guide provides a tour of a typical home, complete with description of what happens in a bathroom and at meal times.

"People in England eat with knives, forks and spoons. If you want to use just a spoon or fork or hands then it is not a worry.

"Many people drink alcohol in England. They do so at bars, at homes or at clubs - the English equivalent to a Masai party.

"When people drink they [seem] sillier or

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Six Masai warriors, who are so fierce they kill male lions with their bare hands,

are leaving their remote Tanzanian village to run in the London Marathon, have been given a detailed four-page guide

The visiting Masai will run the London marathon to raise money for water supplies back home

"Visiting England: A Cultural Briefing for the Warriors"

You may be surprised by the number of people that there are and they all seem to be rushing around everywhere

Even though some may look like they have a frown on their face, they are very friendly people

The warriors, who are leaving their village of Eluai in northern Tanzania for the first time, will run the 26.2-mile course in their traditional red robes, complete with shields and sticks

While the guide praises the warmth of the English people, the Masai are warned not to take their hosts' generosity for granted.

"If you see something that someone else has, like a bracelet,

then the person will find it very unusual if you were to take it and wear it."

Tags: london marathon

Beautiful tropical birds at London Zoo

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:13:09 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn
clipper's remarks: For anyone thinking how vibrant and crystal clear the picture of Queen Victoria is, it should be pointed out that in keeping with the Victorian theme of the building, Queen Victoria impersonator Sylvia Strange attended the launch, alongside an impersonator playing her lady-in-waiting. The Queen did however visit the zoo several times during her reign. She became the patroness of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) in 1837.

The pavilion took a year to restore and is named after ZSL patron David Blackburn who agreed to underwrite the costs.

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

London Zoo has spent £2.5m on a tropical bird house in a restored Victorian pavilion

A miniature rainforest has been created in the Blackburn Pavilion which will become home to more than 50 species of exotic birds

Two Blue-crowned lory's touch beaks

and a Red-crested turaco in flight

Birds including the Socorro dove, Bali starling, Toco toucan and Mindanao bleeding heart dove will roam free in the pavilion which has been designed as part of ZSL London Zoo's plan to bring down the bars and allow visitors to come face to face with the occupants

The Blackburn Pavilion was once a reptile house built in 1883 with the proceeds of the sale of the zoo's most famous occupant - the 11-feet-tall African elephant Jumbo - to circus owner P T Barnum. It was converted to a birdhouse in the 1920s

Red-crested turaco

Toco toucan

and Red-crested cardinal

Black-winged stilt

Queen Victoria

observing a Blue-bellied roller

Blue-bellied roller

Red-crested cardinal

All pictures by Oli Scarff

Tags: london zoo, tropical birds

World's best-known protest symbol turns 50

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:54:32 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn
clipper's remarks: Gerald Holtom, the designer and a former WWII conscientious objector from London, considered using a Christian cross motif but, instead, settled on using letters from the semaphore alphabet, superimposing N(uclear) on D(isarmament) and placing them within a circle symbolising Earth. The sign was quickly adopted by CND.

How the sign migrated to the US is explained in various ways. Some say it was brought back from the Aldermaston protest by civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, a black pacifist who had studied Gandhi's techniques of non-violence.

American pacifist Ken Kolsbun said: "The sign really got going over here during the 1960s and 70s, when it became associated with anti-Vietnam protests."

As the sign became a badge of the hippie movement of the late 1960s, the hippies' critics scornfully compared it to a chicken footprint, and drew parallels with the runic letter indicating death.

In the 1980s it became the banner of the international grassroots anti-nuclear movemen

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

It started life as the emblem of the British anti-nuclear movement but it has become an international sign for peace, and arguably the most widely used protest symbol in the world

It had its first public outing 50 years ago on a chilly Good Friday as thousands of British anti-nuclear campaigners set off from London's Trafalgar Square on a 50-mile march to the weapons factory at Aldermaston

I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad

Gerald Holtom

In a book to commemorate the symbol's 50th birthday, Mr Kolsbun charts how it was transported across the Atlantic and took on additional meanings for the Civil Rights movement, the counter-culture of the 1960s and 70s including the anti-Vietnam protests, and the environmental, women's and gay rights movements.

Anti-Vietnam protesters at a rally in New York

The peace sign was adopted by the counter-culture movement

US soldier

Tags: cnd symbol

Sir Arthur C Clarke (1917-2008)

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 06:45:33 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn
clipper's remarks: Clarke's Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Science fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke has died at the age of 90 in Sri Lanka

Arthur C Clarke was born in Minehead, a town in Somerset in the south-west of England, on 16 December 1917

A farmer's son, he was educated at Huish's Grammar School in Taunton before joining the civil service

During World War II, Clarke volunteered for the Royal Air Force, where he worked in the, then highly-secretive, development of radar

Demobbed at the war's end, he went to King's College, London, where he took a First in maths and physics, before becoming a full-time writer in the late 1940s

He wrote story-lines for the comic-book hero, Dan Dare, inspired Gene Roddenberry to create Star Trek and

predicted the advent of communications satellites

A seer of the modern age, Sir Arthur C Clarke was an original thinker, a scientific expert whose tales combined technology and good old-fashioned storytelling and whose influence went far beyond the written page.

Tags: visionary and author

No more bendy buses for London. Whew!

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:28:55 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn
clipper's remarks: What, has common sense finally raised its head in the Mayor's Parlour?
Bendy buses may well be popular with passengers, but in central London they are totally unsuitable for the Capital's roads and cause more problems than they solve.

The opinions expressed are those of this Clipper only. Other opinions are of course available.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

The mayor of London has revealed that he will not be ordering any further fleets of bendy buses.

Ken Livingstone said they were only introduced for a small number of routes and there were no plans to put more on the roads.

It follows a pledge from his Tory rival Boris Johnson who said he would scrap them in favour of Routemasters if he were elected as mayor.

But Livingstone insisted bendy buses were popular with commuters.

"And although papers like the Daily Telegraph which ran a campaign against them may think they are deeply unpopular buses, when we ask bus users which buses they are satisfied with the bendy buses get slightly higher scores."

Critics argue the buses are not suited to London's roads and have led to increased revenue losses for Transport for London (TfL) because they have no conductors.

Tags: bendy buses in london

Only English prisoner at Auschwitz dies, 97

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 17:13:18 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn
clipper's remarks: In his book, An Englishman in Auschwitz, Mr Greenman described their arrival in Birkenau.

"The women were separated from the men: Else and Barny were marched about 20 yards away to a queue of women...I tried to watch Else. I could see her clearly against the blue lights. She could see me too for she threw me a kiss and held up our child for me to see. What was going through her mind I will never know. Perhaps she was pleased that the journey had come to an end."

Mr Greenman later said that the hope of being reunited with Else and Barney kept him going in the gruelling days ahead.

After learning his wife and son had been gassed, Mr Greenman dedicated his life to educating people about the holocaust and fighting racism.

He never remarried, grieving for his lost family all his life, and spent his last years living at his home in Ilford, east London.

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

A Holocaust survivor thought to have been the only Englishman imprisoned in the Auschwitz death camp has died. He was 97

Leon Greenman, who was born in London, was living in Rotterdam in Holland with his Dutch wife and young son when the family were rounded up by the Nazis in 1943

Greenman was one of 700 Dutch Jews moved to the notorious concentration camp in 1943 but of the group just he and one other man survived

Mr Greenman was taken by his father to live in Rotterdam when he was five

After seeing people in London digging trenches in the streets

he hurried back to Holland intending to collect his wife and return to England

But reassured by Neville Chamberlain's signing of the Munich agreement, the couple delayed

in October 1942, the couple and their two year old son Barney were taken to the nearby Westerbork concentration camp, and then on to Auschwitz

After surviving intensive labour in six different death camps, he was in Buchenwald when the American army liberated it on April 11, 1945.

Tags: english auschwitz survivor

Images of Nijinski

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 06:31:02 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn
clipper's remarks: Vaslav Nijinsky was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1989 and was one of the most gifted male dancers in history and he became celebrated for his virtuosity and for the depth and intensity of his characterisations.

Nijinsky had a nervous breakdown in 1919 and his career effectively ended. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and taken by his wife Romola (a Hungarian countess) to Switzerland where he was treated by psychiatrist Eugene Bleuler. He spent the rest of his life in and out of psychiatric hospitals and asylums. Romola devoted her life entirely to his care and her devotion to him was complete.

Nijinsky died in a London clinic on 8 April 1950 and interred in London until 1953 when his body was reburied in Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris, France.

Clip Source: www.bonhams.com

MONTENEGRO (ROBERT) Vaslav Nijinsky. An Artistic Interpretation of his Work in Black, White, and Gold

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Romola Pulszky, a Hungarian countess

Vaslav Nijinsky as Vayou in Nikolai Legat's revival of Marius Petipa's The Talisman, St. Petersburg, 1910

Vaslav Nijinsky in the role of Petrushka.

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Leon Bakst, Nijinsky in The Afternoon of a Faun

George Barbier, Nijinsky as the faun, 1913

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Tombstone of Vaslav Nijinsky in Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris. The statue shows Nijinsky as the puppet Petrouchka.

Tags: nijinski

Tram Ticket Dairy Adverts

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 05:44:29 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn
clipper's remarks: Advertising by other businesses on the reverse of transport tickets is not a new idea. The following date from the 1920s to the 1960s.

Clip Source: www.milkbottlenews.org.uk

tram tickets, ranging in date from the 1920s to the 1960s,

Portsmouth Tramways, 1932 (left) and 1927 (right)

Liverpool Corporation,
early 1950s

Liverpool Corporation,
believed to be 1950s

Mansfield District Traction, early 1950s

Torquay Tramways, 1930s

Port Talbot, early 1960s

Wolverhampton Corporation,
mid 1950s (left) and early 1950s (right)

Birmingham, 1930's to 1940's

West Hartlepool Corporation, 1940s

Southport, 1950s

Cheltenham, 1930s

Gloucester, 1940

London, 1926

Tags: dairy adverts on tram tickets

Saved by the Demolition Man

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:54:51 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn
clipper's remarks: The Victorian Society (set up in 1958 by John Betjeman and Nikolaus Pevsner) is celebrating 50 years of trying to save the UK's 19thC buildings. We love Victorian architecture now, but once their public buildings were being listed for demolition.
The following pictures show 10 examples of some wonderful architecture from the 19thC and early 20thC, saved for the enjoyment of future generations.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

The magnificent country house at Tyntesfield in Somerset

Shadwell Park in Norfolk

An Edwardian building, the former Temperance Billiards Hall in Lewisham, London was to be demolished, but has now been listed

In 2005, Camden council planned to abandon Kentish Town Baths. After a campaign it pledged money to restore them

Llanfyllin Workhouse, Oswestry, Wales

Undershaw, the house in Surrey where The Hound of the Baskervilles was written

Liverpool's Albert Dock, built by JB Hartley in 1841-49 was threatened with demolition in the 1970s. After being listed in 1985, it is now a major tourist attraction

George Gilbert Scott's neoclassical Foreign Office

Albert Memorial in London's Kensington Gardens. It faced being broken up in the 1990s but is now restored

Gilbert Scott's iconic hotel at St Pancras station

Tags: victorian architecture

The Frog from Hell

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:54:14 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn
clipper's remarks: Prof Susan Evans, who studied Beezebufo with Dr Marc Jones at UCL says: "This frog, a relative of today's Horned frogs, would have been the size of a slightly squashed beach-ball, with short legs and a big mouth. If it shared the aggressive temperament and 'sit-and-wait' ambush tactics of living Horned toads, it would have been a formidable predator on small animals.

Its diet would most likely haveconsisted of insects and small vertebrates like lizards, but it's not impossible that Beelzebufo might even have munched on hatchling orjuvenile dinosaurs."

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

A squat beachball sized toad dubbed 'the frog from Hell' has been found in Madagascar, where it it once may have snacked on baby dinosaurs and other small animals

The 70 million year-old fossil frog is likened by researchers to a "slightly squashed beach-ball" and has been nicknamed Beelzebufo

The discovery of the creature, of a kind once thought unique to South America, lends weight to a new theory that Madagascar, India and South America were once linked together into a supercontinent until late in the Age of Dinosaurs, around 65 million years ago

The new frog esembles living Horned frogs (ceratophryines or 'pac-man frogs') in having a squat body, huge head and wide mouth, containing dozens of little teeth

With a body length (not counting the legs) of up to 16 inches - longer than a rugby ball - and a weight of around four kilos (10 pounds)

The fossil has been identified by scientists from University College London and Stony Brook University, New York

Tags: fossil frog

Grisly History

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:28:21 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn
clipper's remarks: Sir Hugh's wife asked for his bones to be buried on his family's Gloucestershire estate but only the head, a thigh bone and a few vertebrae were returned to her. These are the bones that are missing from the Hulton Abbey skeleton.

In addition, the abbey formed part of the estate of Sir Hugh's brother-in-law, Hugh Audley, and it is thought the family may have chosen to bury what remained of their disgraced relative there.

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

A mutilated body found in an abbey graveyard has been identified as that of a notorious medieval villain rumoured to have been the gay lover of Edward II

The remains, which bear the hallmarks of having been hanged, drawn and quartered, are thought to be those of Sir Hugh Despenser the Younger

The decapitated remains, buried at Hulton Abbey, Staffs, have intrigued experts since they were uncovered during the 1970s

Edward II

Sir Hugh insinuated himself into the king's favour

His downfall came when the queen and her ally, Roger Mortimer, deposed the king in 1326

Sir Hugh was judged a traitor and a thief. He was hanged and, still conscious, castrated, disembowelled and then quartered before his head was displayed on London Bridge

the Staffordshire skeleton had been beheaded and chopped into several pieces with a sharp blade, suggesting a ritual killing

High treason dictated that the perpetrator should suffer more than one death

Sir Hugh was 40 when he was killed

Tags: remains of hugh despenser, edward ii's gay lover identified

Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 15:34:08 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn
clipper's remarks: Or, to give him his full name:

Qadar-qadrat-i-Qavvi--Shaukat-i-Shahanshah-i-Jam Jah din Panah-i-Zillu'llah ul-Mamdud fi'l-ardin Ghias-ul-Islam va-ul-Muslimin us-Sultan ul-Azam va Khaqan ul-Afkham Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Nasser al-Din Shah

was the King and Shah of Persia from September 17, 1848 to May 1, 1896 when he was assassinated. He was the son of Mohammad Shah Qajar and the longest reigning monarch king in Persian history

He had sovereign power for close to 50 years and was also the first Persian monarch to ever write and publish his diaries

In 1890 he met British Gerald Talbot and signed a contract with him giving him the ownership of Iranian Tobacco Industry, but he later was forced to cancel the contract after Mirza Reza Shirazi issued a Fatwa that made farming, trading and consuming tobacco as Haram (forbidden)

It even affected the Shah's personal life as his wives did not allow him to smoke

introduced a number of western innovations to Persia, including a modern postal system, train transport, a banking system and newspaper publishing. He was the first Iranian to be photographed

in The Royal Albert Hall, London. Seated between the Princess of Wales and her sister the Tsesarevna of Russia

Tags: iran, persia, shah

The Illustrated London News

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 15:26:28 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn
clipper's remarks: The magazine was published weekly until 1971, when it became a monthly. From 1989, it was published bi-monthly, then quarterly. The magazine is no longer being published, but the Illustrated London News Group still exists.

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

First page of the first edition

The Illustrated London News is a magazine founded by Herbert Ingram and his friend Mark Lemon, the editor of the magazine Punch. With Lemon as his chief adviser, the first edition of the Illustrated London News appeared on 14 May 1842. Costing sixpence, the magazine had sixteen pages and thirty-two woodcuts. The first edition included pictures of the war in Afghanistan, a train crash in France, a steamboat explosion in Canada and a fancy dress ball at Buckingham Palace.