Photo Nick Kaye. Polecat Retreat St Leonards Road, Leicester

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Saw this on a poster but where does it come from?

More at Serendipity Luck and Coincidence

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I’ve discovered a fair bit of weirdness associated with Zzyzx Road including an evangelist and the endangered Mohave tui chub, it’s had TWO films made about it read more by clicking here if you dare!

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King Eadred of England 946-955AD when he got old could no longer chew food. He used to suck out the nutrients and spit out the rest. His nobles were disgusted by this but could not say anything because he was King!

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For you to be alive you need to have an unbroken chain of ancestors, so your forefathers survived plagues, wars, illnesses, accidents, wars, starvation and so on. You had an ancestor alive at the same time as Jesus, you had an ancestor who walked out of Africa, an ancestor who first fashioned a stone tool.

Seems miraculous and yet mathematically it has no significance as the same is true for every other human alive today.

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The Battle of Hürtgen Forest (German: Schlacht im Hürtgenwald) is the name given to the series of fierce battles fought between U.S. and German forces during World War II in the Hürtgen Forest, which became the longest battle on German ground during World War II, and the longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought in its history.

The Hürtgen Forest cost the U.S. First Army at least 33,000 killed and incapacitated, including both combat and noncombat losses; Germans casualties were between 12,000 and 16,000.

This battle was completely over-shadowed by the Battle of the Bulge, many of those that died here in the most miserable conditions were heroes from D-Day and they should not be forgotten.

I’d never heard of this until just recently learn much more here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hurtgen_Forest

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Clair Patterson developed a Lead-dating technique which allowed him to calculate the first ever accurate age for the Earth to be 4.55 billion years.

During these studies he became aware of Lead Pollution emanating from Lead anti-knocking additives in gasoline, namely that we had a 1000 times more lead contamination in our bodies than our ancestors.

This lead to lead being banned in gasoline but not before an arduous battle with the Ethyl Corporation where amongst other things they offered a massive amount of money to Patterson’s University to get rid of him.

Bill Bryson in his marvelous book A Short History of Nearly Everything has helped publicize this remarkable unsung hero!

More here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Patterson

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I actually mean English spelling mistakes that you mustn’t make if you are a native English speaker, some of them are what I call “CV straight in the bin” mistakes.

• If your English should be “If you’re English” . This is the worst mistake to make, what’s more your spell checker usually won’t catch it. Although anyone can make this mistake if writing when not fully alert!
• Seperate wrong it’s Separate think “part”
• Desperate however requires the ‘e’
• Definitely doesn’t contain an ‘a’
• its (for showing possession; mistakenly written as it’s, the contraction for it is)
• Receive is correct (i before e except after c)
• Watch out for Their, There and They’re
• Weather or Whether but you will almost certainly never require Wether which is a castrated ram

Avoid the above as they imply that you did not complete formal education hence usually they cause your CV to be rejected immediately.

By the way for your amusement a sentence containing the exceptions to the i before e except after c rule.

Neither financier seized either weird species of leisure.

(BTW if you’re wondering why I target native speakers it’s because foreigners usually make completely different mistakes but not necessarily those above)

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Going to School with the 101st Airborne Little Rock

Photo Wikicommons US Government Public Domain

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Mother Maybelle Carter playing Wildwood Flower at the Johnny Cash show. Also featuring the Carter sisters Anita Carter & Helen Carter. June was not there because she was pregnant of John Carter Cash.

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