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Jane Johnson died in 1741; her husband had a statue of her placed in St. Boniface's Church, Bunbury, Cheshire, but it was removed 20-odd years later and secretly buried in the churchyard by a scandalised vicar, then rediscovered over 100 years later, and brought back into the church.
I wish someone would start a British version of Roadside America.
John Wilkes Booth's brother saved Robert Todd Lincoln's life in late 1864/early 1865. It should be pointed out that Edwin Booth didn't share his brother's beliefs, and was a supporter of Abraham Lincoln and the Union.
In 1650, Oswald Krol, of Lindau, Germany, was convicted of murder and executed. His last wish was that if he should be vindicated after his death, his remains be disinterred and placed in a conspicuous spot for at least half a century. A few years later another man confessed to the murder.
Krol's remains were exhumed and placed in front of the bench of the city court so that the presiding justice would have the case of Krol constantly before his eyes. His skeleton remained there for 50 years.
The longest complete dinosaur is the Diplodocus which is 89 feet long and was discovered in Wyoming.
During WWII, London Zoo killed all their venomous animals in case the zoo was bombed and the animals escaped.
Leonardo Da Vinci would buy caged animals from the market just to set them free.
Jim Bowie did not invent the Bowie knife. It was designed by his brother Rezin Bowie. The knife has a blade 9 1/4 inches long and 1 1/2 inches wide.
King George I of England could not speak English.
Humans have caused 322 animal extinctions over the past 500 years.
Twelve months ago, I was in email contact with someone whose father had served in the Second Anglo-Boer War, in 1900. That made me look to see if any children of Civil War veterans were still living, and, as of 5.26.2017, at least one still was. Irene Triplett's father served in both Confederate and Union armies during the war.
Stalag Luft III (The Great Escape) March 24/25 1944
Stalag Luft III was established in March of 1942 in the German province of Lower Silesia near the town of Sagan (now Zagan, Poland). The site was selected because its sandy soil made it difficult for POWs to escape by tunneling. It is best known for two escape plots by Allied POWs.
One in 1943 that was the basis for the 1950 film The Wooden Horse.
The other was in 1944 that inspired the 1963 movie The Great Escape from the book of the same name by Australian pilot Paul Brickhill, who was at the camp but didn't go through the tunnel because he was claustrophobic.
The camp had a substantial library with schooling facilities and many POWs earned degrees there. The prisoners published two newspapers in the camp and built a theatre where they put on shows. They used the camp amplifier to broadcast a news and radio program. The camp had 800 Luftwaffe guards, most were either too old for combat duty or young men convalescing after long hours of duty or from wounds.
Stalag Luft III had the best organized recreational program of any POW camp in Germany. Each compound had athletic fields and volleyball courts. The prisoners boxed, played basketball, softball, touch football, table tennis and fencing. A 20 foot pool used to store water for firefighting was occasionally used for swimming. There were 10,943 prisoners total at the camp. The prisoner's barracks were 24 inches off the ground to enable guards to see if any tunneling was going on. Seismograph microphones were placed around the perimeter of the compound to detect any digging.
Friedrich Wilhelm Von Lindeiner-Wildau was the Kommandant and the designer of the camp.
The escape was conceived by Royal Air Force Squadron leader Roger Bushell and authorized by the senior British officer at Stalag Luft III Herbert Massey.
Bushell's plan was to dig 3 tunnels, Tom, Dick, and Harry, and have over 200 prisoners escape, all wearing civilian clothes and some with forged papers. More than 600 prisoners worked on the tunnels. Unlike the movie, no Americans escaped through the tunnels, they participated in the digging but were transferred to a newer camp just prior to the escape.
The tunnels were very deep, about 30 feet below the surface. They were only two feet wide. The main tunnel, the one they ended up using, was 334 feet long. They used milk cans from the Red Cross to build duct work systems and a pump to create fresh air was made from odds and ends.
76 men escaped through the tunnel, 73 of them were later captured. Following the escape, the Germans made an inventory of the camp and found out how extensive the operation had been.
4000 bed boards were missing
90 complete double-bunk beds were missing
635 mattresses
192 bed covers
161 pillow cases
52 twenty-man tables
10 single tables
34 chairs
76 benches
1219 knives
478 spoons
582 forks
69 lamps
246 water cans
30 shovels
1000 feet of electric wire
600 feet of rope
3424 towels
Electric cable had been stolen after being left unattended by German workers, because they had not reported the theft, they were executed by the Gestapo.
The Germans had a hard time figuring out where the two ends of the tunnel were located, one guard crawled into the exit of the tunnel, got stuck and screamed for help. He was rescued by the prisoners.
Hitler initially wanted the 73 captured prisoners, Commandant Von Lindeiner and all the guards who were on duty at the time of the escape shot. Hermann Goring and other high ranking officers argued against the executions as a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Hitler eventually ordered the head of the SS, Himmler, to execute more than half of the escapees. Himmler turned that chore over to General Arthur Nebe, who himself would be executed a year later for his involvement in the plot to kill Hitler.
Unlike the movie, the 50 prisoners were not executed together. They were killed 1 or 2 at a time in different locations.
Nationalities of the executed prisoners;
20 British
6 Canadians
6 Polish
5 Australian
3 South African
2 New Zealanders
2 Norwegian
1 Greek
1 Argentinian
1 Belgian
1 French
1 Czechoslovak
1 Lithuanian
The 3 who successfully escaped
Per Bergsland, Norwegian pilot RAF
Jens Muller, Norwegian pilot RAF
Bram Van der Stok, Dutch pilot RAF
The camp was liberated by the Russians in January 1945
Til Kiwe, the actor who played Frick, the German officer who took a shot at McQueen when the prisoners were coming out of the tunnel, was himself a POW during the war. He was a German paratrooper officer who was captured in North Africa in 1943 and made several escape attempts from an American POW camp in Colorado. He tried getting into Mexico but was caught by the border patrol. Another time he dyed his uniform with brown vegetable juice and made it all the way to St. Louis but was caught at the train station when an employee noticed his uniform looked funky. After the war he became an actor in German movies and television. He was also an anthropologist who made several expeditions to South America.
Hannes Messemer, who played Kommandant Von Luger, had been captured on the Eastern Front by the Soviet army, escaped, and walked hundreds of miles to the German border.
During idle periods of filming the movie, all the actors and members of the crew, were asked to take thin, 5-inch strings of black rubber and knot them around thin strings of enormous lengths. Those made up the scenes of barbed wire.
In the scene where McQueen strings a wire across the road to obtain a motorcycle, McQueen himself played the German motorcyclist who ran into the wire.
Steve McQueen was allowed to ride (in disguise) as one of the pursuing German soldiers in the final sequence, through the magic of editing, you get to see McQueen chasing himself.
Steve McQueen was given a brand new sports car by the producers and he would take other actors joy riding through the woods. James Coburn said " He tore that car to hell."
One day, the police in the German town where the film was shot, set up a speed trap near the set. Several members of the cast and crew were caught, including Steve McQueen. The chief of police told McQueen, " Herr McQueen, we have caught several of your comrades today, but you have won the prize (for the highest speeding). McQueen was arrested and briefly jailed.
John Leyton, the actor who played Willie and escaped with Charles Bronson, is also a singer. You can find a recording he did with the music from The Great Escape on Youtube.
In 1665 the small village of Eyam (pronounced 'Eem'), in Derbyshire, became infected with bubonic plague, known as The Great Plague. The rector, after many deaths, was able to persuade the villagers to quarantine themselves from the outside world, no-one allowed in or out, to try to stop the spread of the disease, rather than flee from their homes. The last death from the plague in Eyam was in November 1666 - the 260th person to die there. Eyam is the only recorded village in Britain to have isolated itself during The Great Plague to try to save others.
About a mile outside the village is this well, one of several sites where the villagers would leave money soaked in vinegar, which was supposed to prevent the money becoming infected. In return for the money, outsiders would leave them food. The well is known as Mompesson's Well, named after the rector of Eyam.
Modern-day visitors throw money into the well, presumably hoping for good luck.
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