Wednesday, 26 November 2025

What possessed a nineteenth-century inventor to replace the simple Anglo-Saxon plug with this complex mechanism of ratchets and rods

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Upstairs, an hour later, I wondered for the thousandth time why the French prefer such a complicated system to drain their bathwater. What p...
Tuesday, 25 November 2025

‘Not all of them,’ insists Vincent, when I mention this. ‘Only the pretty ones.’

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Vincent [Leflaive], on the other hand, could never be mistaken for other than he is. His shabbiness in the vineyards at vintage time is that...
Sunday, 23 November 2025

Louis XI, cunning and cold, secretly financed the Swiss to attack his rebellious subject

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Gazing at this map [of Charles the Bold’s territories], Burgundian children must have marvelled at the extent of Charles’s vast domain, stre...
Saturday, 22 November 2025

He fears him more than the Russians

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‘Loulou Carillon’s father is afraid Mitterand will take away all his vineyards – he fears him more than the Russians. In the first round, ei...

The Royal Oak is the third most common pub name in Britain

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Oak Apple Day was declared a public holiday by parliament, and its official celebration continued until 1859. The date is still celebrated a...
Thursday, 25 September 2025

The supposed icon of the “Spanish reconquest” actually spent much of his career defending Muslim kingdoms against their Muslim and Christian enemies

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And so it was that when the armies of the two taifa kingdoms clashed at the Battle of Cabra in 1079, each was led by a detachment of Castili...
Wednesday, 24 September 2025

He’ll pass then, whereas Kennedy could never have passed them

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One Senator did not share those feelings [that the South could block civil rights]. “Smarter than they are” though Richard Russell may have ...