Ranulph Fiennes

Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wickham-Fiennes, 3rd Baronet, OBE (usually simply Ranulph Fiennes, born March 7, 1944) is a British explorer and holder of several endurance records. He was the first man to visit both the North and South Poles.

Fiennes was born in England shortly after the death of his father, Lieutenant Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykham-Fiennes, 2nd Baronet, who was killed in action in World War II. On his birth Fiennes automatically inherited the Baronetcy, becoming the 3rd Baronet. After the war his mother moved the family to South Africa where he remained until he was twelve. Ranulph then returned to be educated at Eton, after which he joined the British Army.

Ranulph Fiennes married his childhood sweetheart Virginia Pepper ("Ginny") in 1970; the two remained married until her death in February 2004.

He is the third cousin of Hollywood film actors Joseph and Ralph Fiennes, and is a distant cousin of Britain's royal family. Ranulph Fiennes was on the shortlist of those considered to replace Sean Connery in the role of James Bond (despite Fiennes having little acting experience). Fiennes was summarily rejected on meeting Bond producer Cubby Broccoli, who said he had "a face like a farmer's". Ranulph Fiennes owns and operates a sheep and cattle farm on Exmoor.

Soldier

Fiennes served eight years in the British army, first with his father's regiment the Royal Scots Greys and later on secondment to the Special Air Service, where he specialised in demolitions.

Offended by the construction of a concrete dam built for a film production of Doctor Dolittle at Castle Coombe, Wiltshire, Fiennes and an SAS comrade demolished the dam (using explosives Fiennes had obtained for authorised demolitions, but which by dint of efficiency he had been able to save). Both fled, and Fiennes (who had recently completed a training course on evading dogs) escaped capture - but his comrade did not, and both were subsequently discharged from the SAS and returned to their regiments.

Following his service in the British Army, Ran Fiennes served in the private army of the Sultan of Oman.

Adventurer

Since the 1960s Fiennes has been an explorer. He led expeditions up the White Nile on a hovercraft in 1969 and on Norway's Jostedalsbre Glacier in 1970. Perhaps his most famous trek was the Transglobe Expedition that he undertook from 1979 until 1982. Fiennes and Charles Burton journeyed around the world on its polar axis using surface transport only, covering 52,000 miles and becoming the first people to have visited both poles.

In 1992 Fiennes lead an expedition that discovered the lost city of Ubar in Oman. The following year he joined with nutrition specialist Mike Stroud to become the first to cross Antarctica unaided. Their journey of 97 days is the longest in south Polar history.

In 2000 he attempted to walk solo and unsupported to the north pole. The expedition failed when his sleds fell through weak ice and Fiennes was forced to pull them out by hand. He sustained severe frostbite to the tips of several fingers, forcing him to abandon the attempt. On returning home, his surgeon insisted the necrotic fingertips be retained for several months (to allow regrowth of the remaining healthy tissue) prior to amputation. Impatient at the pain the dying fingertips caused, Fiennes removed them himself (in his garden shed) with an electric saw.

Despite suffering from a heart attack and undergoing a double heart by-pass operation just four months previously, Fiennes joined up with Stroud again in 2003 to carry out the extraordinary feat of completing seven marathons in seven days on seven continents. Their route:

26th October - Race 1: Patagonia, South America
27th October - Race 2: Falkland Islands, "Antarctica"
28th October - Race 3: Sydney, Australasia
29th October - Race 4: Singapore, Asia
31st October - Race 5: London, Europe
31st October - Race 6: Cairo, Africa
1st November - Race 7: New York, North America

Originally Fiennes had planned to run the first marathon on King George Island, Antartica. The second marathon would then have taken place in Santiago, Chile. However bad weather and aeroplane engine trouble caused him to change his plans, running the South American segment in southern Patagonia first and then hopping to the Falklands as a substitute for the Antarctic leg.

Speaking after the event, Fiennes said that the Singapore marathon had been by far the most difficult because of high humidity and pollution. He also said that his cardiac surgeon had approved the marathons providing his heart-rate did not exceed a set amount; Fiennes later confessed to having forgotten to pack his heart-rate monitor.

Author

Fiennes career as an author has developed alongside that of explorer. He is the author of thirteen books in fiction and non-fiction. In 2003 he published a biography of Captain Scott which proved to be a very robust defence of Scott's achievements and reputation which had been strongly questioned by biographers such as Roland Huntford. Although others have made comparisons between Fiennes and Scott, Fiennes himself says that he identifies more with Captain Oates, another member of Scott's doomed Antarctic team.

His works include:
Ranulph Fiennes, To The Ends of the Earth (1983) ISBN 0340252774 -- account of the Transglobe Expedition.

Politician

Fiennes stood for the Countryside Party in the 2004 European elections in the South West England region — 4th on their list of 6. The Party received 30,824 votes - insufficient for any of their candidates to be elected.

Recognition

In 1970, while serving with the Omani Army, Fiennes received the Sultan's Bravery Medal. In 1983 he was awarded an honourary doctorate by Loughborough University, and later received the Royal Geographical Society's Founders Medal.

Fiennes was appointed OBE in 1993 "for Human Endeavour and for charitable services"- his expeditions have raised £5 million for good causes. In 1995 he was awarded the Polar Medal - he is the only person ever to receive a bar to this award, having visited both poles.

His title "Sir" comes from his hereditary Baronetcy - he has not been awarded a knighthood. His formal style is thus Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wickham-Fiennes, Bt, OBE, the "Bt" after his name indicating that he is a baronet.

David Livingstone

David Livingstone

David Livingstone (19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish missionary and explorer of the Victorian era, now best remembered because of his meeting with Henry Morton Stanley which gave rise to the popular quotation, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

Early life

Livingstone was born in the village of Blantyre, South Lanarkshire, Scotland and first studied medicine and theology at the University of Glasgow. While working in London, he emulated the example of another Scot, Robert Moffat, and joined the London Missionary Society, becoming a minister.

From 1840 he worked in Bechuanaland (now Botswana), but was unable to make inroads into South Africa because of Boer opposition.

He married Robert Moffat's daughter Mary in 1844, and she travelled with him for a brief time at his insistence, despite her pregnancy and the protests of the Moffats. She later returned to England with their children. David Livingstone
David Livingstone

Victoria Falls

In the period 1852–56, he explored the African interior, and was the first European to see Victoria Falls (which he named after his monarch, Queen Victoria). Livingstone was one of the first Westerners to make a transcontinental journey across Africa. The purpose of his journey was to open trade routes, while accumulating useful information about the African continent. In particular, Livingstone was a proponent of trade and missions to be established in central Africa. His motto, inscribed in the base of the statue to him at Victoria Falls, was "Christianity, Commerce and Civilization."

At this time he believed the key to achieving these goals was the navigation of the Zambezi River. He returned to Britain to try to garner support for his ideas, and to publish a book on his travels. At this time he resigned from the missionary society to which he had belonged. Zambezi expedition
Livingstone returned to Africa as head of the "Zambezi Expedition", which was a government-funded project to examine the natural resources of southeastern Africa. The Zambezi river turned out to be completely unnavigable past the Cabora basa rapids, a series of cataracts and rapids that Livingstone had failed to explore on his earlier travels.

The expedition lasted from March 1858 until the middle of 1864. Livingstone was an inexperienced leader and had trouble managing a large-scale project. The artist Thomas Baines was dismissed from the expedition on charges (which he vigorously denied) of theft. Livingstone's wife Mary died on 29 April 1863 of dysentery, but Livingstone continued to explore, eventually returning home in 1864 after the government ordered the recall of the Expedition. The Zambezi Expedition was castigated as a failure in many newspapers of the time, and Livingstone experienced great difficulty in raising funds to further explore Africa. Nevertheless, the scientists appointed to work under Livingstone, John Kirk, Charles Meller, and Richard Thornton did contribute large collections of botanicological, geological and ethnographic material to scientific institutions in the UK.

Source of the Nile

In March 1866, Livingstone returned to Africa, this time to Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania), where he set out to seek the source of the Nile. Richard Francis Burton, John Hanning Speke, and Samuel Baker had (although there was still serious debate on the matter) identified either Lake Albert or Lake Victoria as the source (which was partially correct, as the Nile "bubbles from the ground high in the mountains of Burundi halfway between Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria" [1]). Finding the Lualaba River, which feeds the Congo River, Livingstone decided that this river was in fact the "real" Nile.

Illness, pain and death

Livingstone was taken ill and completely lost contact with the outside world for six years. Only one of his 44 later dispatches made it to Zanzibar. Henry Morton Stanley, who had been sent in a publicity stunt to find him by the New York Herald newspaper in 1869, found Livingstone in the town of Ujiji, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, in 1871. Stanley joined Livingstone, and together they continued exploring the north end of the Tanganyika (the other constituent of the present Tanzania), until Stanley left the next year.

Despite Stanley's urgings, Livingstone was determined not to leave Africa until his mission was complete, and he died there, in Chitambo, Barotseland (now Zambia) on 1 May 1873 from malaria and internal bleeding caused by bowel obstruction. His body, carried over a thousand miles by his loyal attendants Chuma and Susi, was returned to Britain for burial in Westminster Abbey.

Honours

Blantyre, the largest city in Malawi, is named after Livingstone's birthplace
A portrait of Livingstone long featured on a Scottish banknote
According to Marlene Nourbese Philip, in her influencial book "Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence", David Livingstone "advocate[d] the destruction of African society and religious customs so [he] could bring European commerce more easily to the Africans, and then Christianity", and he "captured and seized the Silence [he] found-- possessed it like the true discoverer [he was]-- dissected and analysed it; labelled it-- [he] took their Silence-- the Silence of the African-- and replaced it with [his] own-- the silence of [his] word."

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus (1451—May 20, 1506) was an explorer and trader who crossed the Atlantic Ocean and reached the Americas in 1492 under the flag of Castilian Spain. He believed that the earth was a relatively small sphere, and argued that a ship could reach the Far East via a westward course.

Columbus was not the first person to reach the Americas, which he found already populated. Nor was he the first European to reach the continent as it is widely acknowledged today that Vikings from Northern Europe had visited North America in the 11th century and set up a short-lived colony, L'Anse aux Meadows.


There is speculation that an obscure mariner travelled to the Americas before Columbus and provided him with sources for his claims. There are also many theories of expeditions to the Americas from a menagerie of peoples throughout time; see Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact.

Giovanni Caboto was the first modern european to land on the American mainland and is best known as John Cabot for his explorations made under the English flag. Most notably, in 1497, he set sail from Bristol on his ship called the 'Matthew' looking for a sea route to Asia. He ended up in North America, he and his men being the first Europeans since the Vikings verifiably known to have done so. It is thought that he used recollected information from British Sailors who were familiar with the Newfoundland fishing grounds to mount his expedition.

Columbus landed in the Bahamas and later explored much of the Caribbean, including the isles of Cuba and Hispaniola, as well as the coasts of Central and South America. He never reached the present-day United States, although he is generally regarded by Americans as the first European to reach "America."

Unlike the voyage of the Vikings, Columbus's voyages led to a relatively quick, general and lasting recognition of the existence of the New World by the Old World, the Columbian Exchange of species (both those harmful to humans, such as viruses, bacteria, and parasites, and beneficial to humans, such as tomatoes, potatoes, corn, and horses) and the first large-scale colonization of the Americas by Europeans. The voyages also inaugurated ongoing commerce between the Old and New Worlds, thus providing the basis for globalization.

Columbus remains a controversial figure. Some – including many Native Americans – view him as responsible, directly and indirectly, for the deaths of tens, if not hundreds, of millions of indigenous peoples, exploitation of the Americas by Europe, and slavery in the West Indies. Others honour him for the massive boost his discoveries gave to Western expansion and culture. Italian Americans hail Columbus as an icon of their heritage.

It has generally been accepted that he was Genoese, although doubts have persistently been voiced regarding this. His name in Spanish is Cristóbal Colón, in Portuguese Cristóvão Colombo and in Italian Cristoforo Colombo. Columbus is a Latinate form of his surname. The Latin roots of his name can be translated "Christ-bearer, Colonizer." Columbus signature reads Xpo ferens ("Bearing Christ")

Columbus claimed governorship of the new territories (by prior agreement with the Spanish monarchs) and made several more journeys across the Atlantic. While regarded by some as an excellent navigator, he was seen by many contemporaries as a poor administrator and was stripped of his governorship in 1500.

Early life

There are various versions of Columbus's origins and life before 1476. (See Columbus's National Origin.) The account that has traditionally been supported by most historians is as follows:

Columbus was born between August 26 and October 31 in the year 1451, in the Italian port city of Genoa. His father was Domenico Colombo, a woollens merchant, and his mother was Suzanna Fontanarossa, the daughter of a woollens merchant. Christopher had three younger brothers, Bartolomeo, Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo, and a sister, Bianchinetta.

In 1470, the family moved to Savano, where Christopher worked for his father in wool processing. During this period he studied cartography with his brother Bartolomeo. Christopher received almost no formal education; a voracious reader, he was largely self-taught.

In 1474, Columbus joined a ship of the Spenola Financiers, who were Genoese patrons of his father. He spent a year on a ship bound towards Khios (an island in the Aegean Sea) and, after a brief visit home, spent a year in Khios. It's believed that's where he recruited some of his sailors from.

A 1476, commercial expedition gave Columbus his first opportunity to sail into the Atlantic Ocean. The fleet came under attack by French privateers off the Cape of St. Vincent. Columbus's ship was burned and he swam six miles to shore.

By 1477, Columbus was living in Lisbon. Portugal had become a center for maritime activity with ships sailing for England, Ireland, Iceland, Madeira, the Azores, and Africa. Columbus's brother Bartolomeo worked as a mapmaker in Lisbon. At times, the brothers worked together as draftsmen and book collectors.

He became a merchant sailor with the Portuguese fleet, and sailed to Iceland via Ireland in 1477, to Madeira in 1478 to purchase sugar, and along the coasts of West Africa between 1482 and [1485], reaching the Portuguese trade post São Jorge da Mina at the Guinea coast.

Columbus married Felipa Perestrello e Moniz, a daughter from a noble Portuguese family of Italian ancestry, in 1479. Felipa's father had partaken in the discovery of the Madeira Islands and owned one of them, but died when Felipa was a baby, leaving his second wife a wealthy widow. As part of his dowry, the mariner received all of Perestello's charts of the winds and currents of the Portuguese possessions of the Atlantic. Columbus and Felipa had a son, Diego Colón in 1480. Felipa died in January of 1485. Columbus later found a lifelong partner in Spain, an orphan named Beatriz Enriquez. She was living with a cousin in the weaving industry of Córdoba. They never married, but Columbus left Beatriz a rich woman and directed Diego to treat her as his own mother. The two had a son, Ferdinand in 1488. Both boys served as pages to Prince Juan, son of Ferdinand and Isabella, and each later contributed, with fabulous success, to the rehabilitation of their father's reputation.

The Idea

Christian Europe, long allowed safe passage to India and China (sources of valued trade goods such as silk and spices) under the hegemony of the Mongol Empire (Pax Mongolica, or "Mongol peace"), was now, after the fragmentation of that empire, under a complete economic blockade by Muslim states. In response to Muslim hegemony on land, Portugal sought an eastward sea route to the Indies, and promoted the establishment of trading posts and later colonies along the coast of Africa. Columbus had another idea. By the 1480s, he had developed a plan to travel to the Indies (then roughly meaning all of south and east Asia) by sailing west across the Ocean Sea (the Atlantic Ocean) instead.

It is sometimes claimed that the reason Columbus had a hard time receiving support for this plan was that Europeans believed that the Earth was flat. This myth can be traced to Washington Irving's novel The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828).

The fact that the Earth is round was evident to most people of Columbus's time, especially other sailors and navigators (Eratosthenes (276-194 BC) had in fact accurately calculated the circumference of the Earth). The problem was that the experts did not agree with his estimates of the distance to the Indies. Most scholars accepted Ptolemy's claim that the terrestrial landmass (for Europeans of the time, Eurasia and Africa) occupied 180 degrees of the terrestrial sphere, leaving 180 degrees of water. In fact, it occupies about 120 degrees, leaving 240 degrees unaccounted for at that time.

Columbus accepted the calculations of Pierre d'Ailly, that the land-mass occupied 225 degrees, leaving only 135 degrees of water. Moreover, Columbus believed that one degree actually covered less space on the earth's surface than commonly believed. Finally, Columbus read maps as if the distances were calculated in Roman miles (1524 meters or 5,000 feet) rather than nautical miles (1853.99 meters or 6,082.66 feet at the equator). The true circumference of the earth is about 40,000km (24,900 statute miles of 5,280 feet each), whereas the circumference of Columbus's earth was the equivalent of at most 19,000 modern statue miles (or 30,600km). Columbus calculated that the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan was 2,400 nautical miles (about 4,444km).

In fact, the distance is about 10,600 nautical miles (19,600km), and most European sailors and navigators concluded that the Indies were too far away to make his plan worth considering. They were right and Columbus was wrong – but, ultimately, like so many successful individuals, extraordinarily fortunate.

Columbus lobbies for funding

Columbus first presented his plan to the court of Portugal in 1485. The king's experts believed that the route would be longer than Columbus thought (the actual distance is even longer than the Portuguese believed), and denied Columbus's request. It is probable that he made the same outrageous demands for himself in Portugal that he later made in Spain, where he went next. He tried to get backing from the monarchs of Aragon and Castile, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, who, by marrying, had united the largest kingdoms of Spain and were ruling them together.

After seven years of lobbying at the Spanish court, where he was kept on a salary to prevent him from taking his ideas elsewhere, he was finally successful in 1492. Ferdinand and Isabella had just conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian peninsula, and they received Columbus in Córdoba (in the monarchs' Alcázar or castle). Isabella finally turned Columbus down on the advice of her "think tank" and he was leaving town in despair when Ferdinand lost his patience. Isabella sent a royal guard to fetch him and Ferdinand later rightfully claimed credit for being "the principal cause why those islands were discovered."

About half of the financing was to come from private Italian investors, which Columbus had already lined up. Financially broke from the Granada campaign, the monarchs left it to the royal treasurer to shift funds among various royal accounts on behalf of the enterprise. Columbus was to be made Admiral of the Ocean Sea and granted an inheritable governorship to the new territories he would discover, as well as a portion of all profits. The terms were absurd, but his own son later wrote that the monarchs really didn't expect him to return.

Voyages

First Voyage

That year, on the evening of August 3, Columbus left from Palos with three ships, the Santa Maria, Niña and Pinta. The ships were property of the Pinzón brothers (Martin and Vicente Yáñez) and Juan de la Cosa, but the monarchs forced the Palos inhabitants to contribute to the expedition. He first sailed to the Canary Islands, fortunately owned by Castile, where he reprovisioned and made repairs, and on September 6 started the five week voyage across the ocean.

One of the enduring legends is that of a faked logbook to make his crew believe they had covered a smaller distance than they actually had. All we have is Bartolome de Las Casas's abstract, and he was not a mariner. Nor was it ever easy to read Columbus's nonnative Spanish with its Portuguese phonetics and Genoese locutions. Until the original diary is found we'll never be sure, but he could never have fooled all the sailors, the pilots, masters, nor least of all the experienced captains at the helms of the Niña and Pinta, the Pinzón brothers. Most likely he calculated the distance as he'd been taught as a youth, and then converted it into numbers the crew would understand.

Another legend is that the crew grew so homesick and fearful that they threatened to hurl Columbus overboard and sail back to Spain. Although the actual situation is unclear, most likely the sailors' resentments merely amounted to complaints or suggestions.

After 65 days out of sight of land, on Martin Alonzo Pinzón's suggestions, on 7 October 1492 as recorded in the ship's log, the crew spotted shore birds flying west and changed direction to make their landfall. A comparison of dates and migratory patterns leads to the conclusion that the birds were Eskimo curlews and American golden plovers.

Columbus called the island he reached San Salvador, and recorded the native name of the island as Guanahani. There is still much discussion about which island he reached. Until 1986, many historians believed that it was likely San Salvador Island (called Watling Island before 1925) in the Bahamas. Now most historians tend to believe that the landfall was Samana Cay. Columbus's landing occurred on October 12, 1492.

The Native Americans he encountered, the Taíno or Arawak, were peaceful and friendly. In his log for October 14, 1492, Columbus drafted a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella concerning the Taíno:

Vuestras Altezas cuando mandaren puedenlos todos llevar a Castilla o tenellos en la misma isla captivos, porque con cincuenta hombres los ternan todos sojuzgados, les haran hazar todo lo que quisieren.
("When your highnesses should so command, all of them can be brought to Castile, or be kept captive on their own island, for with fifty men you will keep them all in subjugation and make them do anything you wish.")
He wrote with such awe of the friendly innocence and beauty of these Indians in their tropical paradise that he inadvertently created the enduring myth of the Noble Savage. "These people have no religious beliefs, nor are they idolaters. They are very gentle and do not know what evil is; nor do they kill others, nor steal; and they are without weapons." No blood was shed on this first voyage; he believed conversion to Christianity would be achieved through love, not force.

On this first voyage, Columbus also explored the northeast coast of Cuba (landed on October 28) and the northern coast of Hispaniola. He'd heard the word "Kulkukan" (Feathered Serpent), and rejoiced that the land of "Kublai Khan" or the "Great Khan" was nigh. He believed the peaks of Cuba to be the Himalayas, which gives one a sense of just how lost he was and how long it took the peoples of the world to map the Earth. (The vast interior of the North and South American mainlands would of course be largely mapped with the leadership of native guides and interpreters.) Here the Santa Maria ran aground and had to be abandoned. He was received by the native cacique Guacanagari, who gave him permission to leave some of his men behind. Columbus founded the settlement La Navidad and left 39 men.

On January 4, 1493 he set sail for home, not yet understanding the elliptical nature of the trade winds that had brought him west. He wrestled his ship against the wind and ran into one of the worst storms of the century. He had no choice but to land his ship in Portugal, where he was told a fleet of 100 caravels had been lost. (Astoundingly, both the Niña and the Pinta were spared.) Some have speculated that landing in Portugal was intentional.

The relations between Portugal and Castile were poor at the time, and he was held up, but finally released. Word of his discovery of new lands rapidly spread throughout Europe. He didn't reach Spain until March 15, when the story of his journey was in its third printing. He was received as a hero in Spain, and this was his moment in the sun. He displayed several kidnapped natives and what gold he'd found to the court. Isabella immediately had the Indians clothed in warm velvets; her tenderness for her new subjects would be a thorn in conquistadors' plans for years. Columbus also displayed the previously unknown tobacco plant, the pineapple fruit, the turkey and the sailor's first love, the hammock. Naturally, he did not bring any of the coveted Indian spices, such as the exceedingly expensive black pepper, ginger or cloves. In his log he wrote "there is also plenty of ají, which is their pepper, which is more valuable than [black] pepper, and all the people eat nothing else, it being very wholesome" (Turner, 2004, P11). The word ají is still used in South American spanish for chile peppers.

Europeans had not yet accidentally set off the epidemics that would kill as many as 85,000,000 Native Americans in fifty years. And no one realized that back in the islands the world's first Latin Americans were in their mothers' wombs.

Second voyage

He left for his second voyage (1493-1496) on September 24, 1493, with 17 ships carrying supplies and about 1200 men to assist in the subjugation of the Taíno and the colonization of the region.

He laid his course more southerly than on his first voyage, first sighting Dominica, which is quite rugged, so he turned north, discovering and naming Guadeloupe, Montserrat, Antigua, and Nevis in the Lesser Antilles, landing on them and claiming them for Spain as he did the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. He then went to Hispaniola, where he found his colonists had fallen into dispute with Indians in the interior and had been killed. He established a new settlement at Isabella, on the north coast of Hispaniola where gold had first been discovered; it was a poor location and the settlement was short-lived. He spent some time exploring the interior of the island for gold and did find some, establishing a small fort in the interior. He explored the south coast of Cuba but did not round the western end, thus convincing himself that it was a peninsula rather than an island, and discovered Jamaica.

Before he left on his second voyage he had been directed by Ferdinand and Isabella to maintain friendly, even loving relations with the natives. However, during his second voyage he sent a letter to the monarchs proposing to enslave some of the native peoples, specifically the Caribs, on the grounds of their aggressiveness. Although his petition was refused by the Crown, in February, 1495 Columbus took 1600 Arawak as slaves. 550 slaves were shipped back to Spain; two hundred died en route, probably of disease, and of the remainder half were ill when they arrived. After legal proceedings, the survivors were released and ordered to be shipped back home. Some of the 1600 were kept as slaves for Columbus's men, Columbus recorded using slaves for sex in his journal. The remaining 400, who Columbus had no use for, were let go and fled into the hills, making, according to Columbus, prospects for their future capture dim. Rounding up the slaves resulted in the first major battle between the Spanish and the Indians in the new world.

The main objective of Columbus's journey had been gold. To further this goal, he imposed a system on the natives in Cicao on Haiti, whereby all those above fourteen years of age had to find a certain quota of gold, which would be signified by a token placed around their necks. Those who failed to reach their quota would have their hands chopped off. Despite such extreme measures, Columbus did not manage to obtain much gold. One of the primary reasons for this was the native susceptibility to European diseases.

In his letters to the Spanish king and queen, Columbus would repeatedly suggest slavery as a way to profit from the new discoveries, but these suggestions were all rejected: the monarchs preferred to view the natives as future members of Christendom.

More importantly, Columbus oversaw the establishment of the encomienda (trusteeship) system, by which Spaniards were granted exclusive use of Indian labor in return for converting them to Christianity; this policy amounted to enslavement of the local population. In some cases, Indians were worked to death; in other cases they died due to newly introduced diseases and malnutrition. Estimates of the pre-Columbian population vary enormously; see fuller discussion at Taíno. Cook and Borah (see references below) estimated the native population (Taíno) of Hispanola at the time of Columbus's conquest in 1493 at 8,000,000, probably the highest estimate. In 1496 Bartolome de las Casas conducted a census after the conquest and initial imposition of the encomienda system, arriving at an estimate of only 3,000,000 Taíno. A Spanish census in 1514 records only 22,000 Taíno, and a census in 1542 recorded only 200. Columbus established his brothers as commanders of the settlements and left Hispaniola for Europe on March 10, 1496; they and other Spanish conquerors employed the encomienda system with similar results elsewhere in the Americas.

Third voyage and arrest

In 1498, Columbus left for the New World a third time, accompanied by the young Bartolome de Las Casas, who would later provide partial transcripts of Columbus's logs. This time he discovered the island of Trinidad (July 31) and the mainland of South America, including the Orinoco River, before returning to Hispaniola. Initially, he described the new lands as belonging to a previously unknown new continent, but later he retreated to his position that they belonged to Asia.

Many of the Spanish settlers of the new colony were discontent, having been misled by Columbus about the supposedly bountiful riches of the new world. Columbus repeatedly had to deal with rebellious settlers and Indians. He had some of his crew hanged for disobeying him. A number of returned settlers and friars lobbied against Columbus at the Spanish court, accusing him of mismanagement. The king and queen sent the royal administrator Francisco de Bobadilla in 1500, who upon arrival (August 23) detained Columbus and his brothers and had them shipped home. Columbus refused to have his shackles removed on the trip to Spain, during which he wrote a long and pleading letter to the Spanish monarchs.

Although he regained his freedom, he did not regain his prestige and lost his governorship. As an added insult, the Portuguese had won the race to the Indies: Vasco da Gama returned in September 1499 from a trip to India, having sailed east around Africa.

Last voyage and later life

Nevertheless he made a fourth voyage, in 1502-1504 (he left Spain on May 9, 1502). On this voyage, accompanied by his younger son Ferdinand, he explored the coast of Central America from Belize to Panama. In 1502, off the coast of what is now Honduras, a trading ship as "long as a galley" was encountered, filled with cargo. This was the first recorded encounter by the Spanish with the Native American civilization of Mesoamerica. Later Columbus was stranded on Jamaica for a year; he sent two men by canoe to get help from Hispaniola; in the meantime, he impressed the local population by correctly predicting an eclipse of the moon. Help finally arrived, and he returned to Spain in 1504.

While Columbus had always given the conversion of non-believers as one reason for his explorations, he grew increasingly religious in his later years. He claimed to hear divine voices, lobbied for a new crusade to capture Jerusalem, often wore Franciscan habit, and described his discoveries of the "paradise" as part of God's plan which would soon result in the Last Judgement and the end of the world.

In his later years Columbus demanded that the Spanish Crown give him 10% of all profits made in the new lands, pursuant to earlier agreements. Because he had been relieved of his duties as governor, the crown felt not bound by these contracts and his demands were rejected. His family later sued for part of the profits from trade with America, but ultimately lost some fifty years later.

On May 20, 1506, Columbus died in Spain, fairly wealthy due to the gold his men had accumulated in Hispaniola. He was still convinced that his discoveries were along the East Coast of Asia. Even after his death, his travels continued: first interred in Valladolid and then in Seville, the will of his son Diego, who had been governor of Hispaniola, had the corpse transferred to Santo Domingo in 1542. In 1795 the French took over, and the corpse was moved to Havana. After the war of 1898, Cuba became independent and Columbus's remains were moved back to Spain, to the cathedral of Seville. However, some claim that he is still buried in the cathedral of Santo Domingo.

Columbus's National Origin: Subject of Debate

Serious doubts have been expressed regarding Columbus's national origin. Although in the popular culture he is generally assumed to be Italian (Genoese), his actual background is clouded in mystery. Very little is really known about Columbus before the mid-1470s. It has been suggested that this might have been because he was hiding something—an event in his origin or history that he deliberately kept a secret.

The issue of Columbus's 'nationality' became an issue after the rise of Nationalism; the issue was scarcely raised until the time of the quadricentenary celebrations in 1892 (see Columbian exposition), when Columbus's Genoese origins became a point of pride for some Italian Americans. In New York City, rival statues of Columbus were underwritten by the Hispanic and the Italian communities, and honourable positions had to be found for each, at Columbus Circle and in Central Park.

One hypothesis is that Columbus served under the French caper Guillaume Casenove Coulon and took his surname, but later tried to hide his piracy. Some Basque historians have claimed that he was Basque. Others had said that he was a converso (Spanish Jew converted to Christianity). In Spain, even converted Jews were much mistrusted; it was suggested that many conversos were still practicing Judaism in secret. However, recent disinterment of his son to retrieve his Y chromosome (which is passed completely unchanged from father to son) has probably ruled out Jewish ancestry.

Another theory is that he was from the island of Corsica, which at the time was part of the Genoese empire. Because the often subversive elements of the island gave its inhabitants a bad reputation, he would have masked his exact heritage. A few others also claim that Columbus was actually Catalan (Colom).

Documents were found in Alentejo, a region of Portugal, suggesting he was born there. Others say that he named the island of Cuba after the Portuguese town Cuba in Alentejo — the town where he, following Portuguese historians, had been born under the name of Salvador Fernandes Zarco (SFZ), son of Fernando, duke of Beja and Isabel Sciarra and grand-son of Cecília Colonna. The Portuguese theory says that he used Sciarra and Colom as pseudonyms.

It is also speculated that Columbus may have come from the island of Khios (or Chios) in Greece. The main point of this theory is that Columbus never said he was from Genoa but from the Republic of Genoa. The island of Khios was under the Genoese rule (1346 - 1566 AD), for the period of his life, and therefore it was part of the Republic of Genoa. There is a village named Pirgi in the island of Khios where to this day many of its inhabitants carry the surname "Colombus".

It has even been suggested that the epitaph on his tomb, translated as "Let me not be confused forever," is a veiled hint left by Columbus that his identity was other than he publicly stated during his life. However, the actual phrase, "Non confundar in aeternam" (in Latin), is perhaps more accurately translated "Let me never be confounded," and is contained in several Psalms.

The language of Columbus

Although Genoese documents have been found about a weaver named Colombo, it has also been noted that, in the preserved documents, Columbus wrote almost exclusively in Castilian, and that he used the language even when writing personal notes, to his brother, and to the Bank of Genoa. There is a small handwritten gloss in an Italian edition of the History of Plinius that he read in his second voyage to America. However it is full of Spanish interferences.

Ramón Menéndez Pidal studied the language of Columbus in 1942. Bartolomé de las Casas in his Historia de las Indias explained that Columbus did not know Castilian well and that he was not born in Castile. Menéndez Pidal guesses that, Columbus learnt in Genoa notions of Portugalized Spanish from some traveller and used a sort of commercial Latin (latín ginobisco for Spaniards) in his deals. The first testimony of his use of Spanish is from the 1480s. Menéndez Pidal detects a lot of influence of Portuguese in his Spanish, mixing for example falar and hablar. He denies the hypothesis of a Galician origin by remarking that, where Portuguese and Galician diverged, Columbus used always the Portuguese form. Menéndez Pidal explains the fact that Columbus learnt Spanish in Portugal by the use of Castilian in Portugal as a "adopted language of culture" from 1450. This same Spanish is used by poets like Fernán Silveira and Joan Manuel. Menéndez Pidal doubts that Columbus did totally tell apart Portuguese and Spanish. That is why he did not put effort to learn them properly.

According to historian Charles Merrill, analysis of his handwriting indicates that it is typical of someone who was a native Catalan, and Columbus's phonetic mistakes in Castilian are "most likely" those of a Catalan. Also, that he married a Spanish noblewoman is presented as evidence that his origin was of nobility rather than the Italian merchant class, since it was unheard of during his time for nobility to marry outside their class. This same theory suggests he was the illegitimate son of a prominent Catalan sea-faring family, which had served as mercenaries in a sea battle against Castilian forces. Fighting against Ferdinand and being illegitimate were two excellent reasons for keeping his origins obscure.

Perceptions of Columbus

Christopher Columbus has had a cultural significance beyond his actual achievements and actions as an individual; he also became a symbol, a figure of legend. The mythology of Columbus has cast him as an archetype for both good and for evil.

The casting of Columbus as a figure of "good" or of "evil" often depends on people's perspectives as to whether the arrival of Europeans to the New World and the introduction of Christianity or the Roman Catholic faith is seen as positive or negative.

Columbus as a hero

Traditionally, Columbus is viewed as a man of heroic stature by the European-descended population of the New World. He has often been hailed as a man of heroism and bravery, and also of faith: he sailed westward into mostly unknown waters, and his unique scheme is often viewed as ingenious. He spread civilization and Christianity into a primitive world. He "set an example for us all by showing what monumental feats can be accomplished through perseverance and faith" (George H.W. Bush, June 8, 1989).

Hero worship of Columbus perhaps reached its zenith around 1892, the 400th anniversary of his first arrival in the Americas. Monuments to Columbus were erected throughout the United States and Latin America, extolling him as a hero.

The myth that Columbus thought the world round while his contemporaries believed in a flat earth was often repeated. This tale was used to show that Columbus was enlightened and forward looking. Columbus's defiance of convention in sailing west to get to the far east was hailed as a model of "American"-style can-do inventiveness.

In the United States, the glorification of Columbus was particularly embraced by some members of the Italian American, Hispanic, and Catholic communities. These groups point to Columbus as one of their own to show that Mediterranean Catholics could and did make great contributions to the USA.

Columbus as a villain

Friar Bartolome de Las Casas wrote of Spanish cruelties contemporaneously with Columbus, but he didn't blame Columbus himself. These texts were used to substantiate the "black legend" by which English imperialists justified their conquests through comparison with Spanish atrocities. However, it was not until the 1960s that Columbus increasingly became seen in the U.S. as an example of what was and is wrong with European imperialism – conquest, exploitation, slavery, genocide. Some argue that the policies Columbus enacted as viceroy and governor of Spanish-occupied territories in the Americas between 1493 and 1500 meet the modern legal definition of genocide.

Much criticism focuses on the continuing positive Columbus myths and celebrations (such as Columbus Day) and their effects on American thought towards present-day Native Americans. Official celebrations of the 500th anniversary of Columbus's first voyage in 1992 were muted, and demonstrators protested marking the anniversary at all. It was in this spirit that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez signed, in October, 2002, a decree changing the name of Venezuela's "Columbus Day" to "The Day of Indigenous Resistance" in honor of the nation's indigenous groups. (For more, see Columbus Day.)

In 2002 Columbus Day was renamed Indian Resistance Day in Venezuela. On October 12, 2004, supporters of the president Hugo Chávez destroyed a 100-years old statue of Columbus in Caracas. They did this because they found Columbus guilty of 'imperialist genocide'. They blotted the statue with slogans like 'Columbus=Bush'.

Richard Branson

Sir Richard Branson (born July 18, 1950) a famed British entrepreneur, is best known for his widely successful Virgin brand, a banner that encompasses a variety of business organizations.

Branson first achieved notoriety with Virgin Records, a record label that started out with multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield and introduced bands like the Sex Pistols and Culture Club to the world music scene. Known for his wacky exploits used to promote his businesses, Branson is keen on playful antagonisms, exemplified by his "Mine is bigger than yours" decals on the new Airbus A340-600 jets used by his airline. He has also made several unsuccessful attempts to fly in a hot air balloon around the world.

The hot air balloon, called the "Virgin Atlantic Flyer," was the first hot air balloon ever to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and was the largest ever flown at 60.513 m³ (2,137,000 ft³) volume, reaching speeds in excess of 130 mph (209 km/h). Sir Richard Branson during the announcement of the Virgin Express airline which would compete with Ryanair and EasyJet

In 1991, Branson crossed the Pacific Ocean from Japan to Arctic Canada, a distance of 7,672 km (4,767 miles), but their track took them a claimed 10,885 km. This again broke all existing records with speeds of up to 245 mph in a balloon measuring 60.513 m³.

He formed Virgin Atlantic Airways in 1984, launched Virgin Mobile in 1999, and later failed in a 2000 bid to handle the National Lottery. He has also started a European short-haul airline, Virgin Express.

In October 2003, he announced he would be teaming up with balloonist Steve Fossett to attempt to break the record for a non-stop flight around the world. A new aircraft, the GlobalFlyer, will be built specially for the attempt by Scaled Composites.

In 1993 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Technology from Loughborough University.

He became Sir Richard Branson when he was knighted by the Queen in 1999 for his business prowess and exuberance for the spirit of the United Kingdom.

On September 25, 2004 he announced the signing of a deal under which a new space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, will license the technology behind SpaceShipOne to take paying passengers into suborbital space.

He has guest starred, playing himself, on several television shows, including Friends, Baywatch and Only Fools and Horses. He also is the star of a new reality television show on Fox called The Rebel Billionaire where sixteen contestants will be tested for their entrepreneurship and their sense of adventure.

Sir Richard appears at No. 85 on the 2002 List of "100 Greatest Britons" (sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public). Branson's high public profile often leaves him open as a figure of satire - the 2000AD series Zenith featured a parody of Branson as a supervillian as at the time the comic's publisher and favoured distributor and the Virgin group were in competition.

Thomas Telford

Thomas Telford (August 9, 1757 - September 2, 1834) was born in Westerkirk, Scotland। He was a stonemason, architect and civil engineer - a noted road-, bridge- and canal- builder.


Early career

At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to a stonemason, and some of his earliest work can still be seen on the bridge across the river Esk in Langholm in the Scottish borders. He worked for a time in Edinburgh and in 1782 he moved to London where (after meeting architects Robert Adam and Sir William Chambers) he was involved in building additions to Somerset House. Two years later he found work at Portsmouth dockyard and - although still largely self-taught - was extending his talents to the specification, design and management of building projects.

In 1787, through his wealthy patron William Pulteney, he became Surveyor of Public Works for Shropshire, England. At this time, 'civil engineering' was a discipline still in its infancy, so Telford was set on establishing himself as an architect. His projects included renovation of Shrewsbury's Castle, the town's prison (during planning of which he met leading prison reformer John Howard), a church (St Mary Magdalene) in Bridgnorth and another at Madeley.

As county surveyor, Telford was also responsible for bridges. In 1790 he designed a bridge carrying the London-Holyhead road over the Severn river at Montford, the first of some 40 bridges he built in Shropshire, including major crossings of the Severn at Buildwas, Bridgnorth and Bewdley. The Buildwas bridge was Telford's first iron bridge (he was heavily influenced by the famous bridge at Ironbridge), but was 30 ft (10 m) wider in span and half the weight. As his engineering prowess grew, Telford was to return to this material again and again.

Ellesmere Canal

Telford's reputation in Shropshire led to his appointment in 1793 to manage the detailed design and construction of the Ellesmere Canal, linking the ironworks and collieries of Wrexham via the north-west Shropshire town of Ellesmere, with Chester (utilising the existing Chester Canal), and then the River Mersey.

Among other structures, this canal involved building an aqueduct over the River Dee in the Vale of Llangollen; for the spectacular Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, Telford used a new method of construction consisting of troughs made from cast iron plates and fixed in masonry.

Eminent canal engineer William Jessop oversaw the project, but the detailed execution of the project was very much left in Telford's hands.

Engineer in demand

The Ellesmere Canal was finally completed in 1805 but alongside his canal responsibilities, Telford's reputation as a civil engineer meant he was constantly consulted on numerous other projects. These included water supply works for Liverpool, improvements to London's docklands and the rebuilding of London Bridge (c.1800).

Most notably (and, again, William Pulteney was influential in his 1801 appointment), Telford devised a masterplan to improve communications in the Highlands of Scotland, a massive project that was to last some 20 years. It included the building of the Caledonian Canal along the Great Glen (and redesign of sections of the Crinan Canal), some 920 miles of new roads, over a thousand new bridges, numerous harbour improvements (including works at Aberdeen, Dundee, Peterhead and Banff, to name but four), and 32 new churches.

Telford also undertook highway works in the Scottish Lowlands, including 184 miles of new roads and numerous bridges, ranging from a 112 ft (34 m) span stone bridge across the Dee at Tongueland in Kirkcudbright (1805-1806) to the 129 ft (39 m) tall Cartland Crags bridge near Lanark (1822).

Telford was consulted in 1806 by the King of Sweden about the construction of a canal between Gothenburg and Stockholm. His plans were adopted and construction of the Göta canal began in 1810. Telford travelled to Sweden at that time to oversee some of the more important initial excavations.

The 'Colossus of Roads'

During his later years, Telford was responsible for rebuilding sections of the London to Holyhead road (a task completed by his assistant of ten years, John MacNeill; today, the route is the A5 trunk road). Between London and Shrewsbury, most of the work amounted to improvements (including the Archway cutting in north London and improvements at Barnet and South Mimms). Beyond Shrewsbury, and especially beyond Llangollen, the work often involved building a highway from scratch. Notable features of this section of the route include the iron bridge across the River Conwy at Betws-y-Coed, the ascent from there to Capel Curig and then the descent from the pass of Nant Ffrancon towards Bangor.

On the island of Anglesey a new embankment across the Stanley Sands to Holyhead was constructed, but the crossing of the Menai Straits was the most formidable challenge, finally overcome by the Menai Suspension Bridge (1819-1826).

Telford also worked on the north Wales coast road between Chester and Bangor, including another major
suspension bridge at Conwy, opened later the same year as its counterpart at Menai.

(The punning nickname Colossus of Roads was given to Telford by his friend and Poet Laureate Robert Southey.)

Late career

Other works by Telford include the St Katharine Docks (1824-1828) close to Tower Bridge in central London, the Gloucester and Berkeley Ship Canal (today known as the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal), the second Harecastle Tunnel on the Trent and Mersey Canal (1827), and the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canal (today part of the Shropshire Union Canal) - started in May 1826 but finished, after Telford's death, in January 1835. At the time of its construction in 1829, Galton Bridge was the longest single span in the world.

In 1820, Telford was appointed the first President of the recently formed Institution of Civil Engineers, a post he held until his death. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Town of Telford

When a new town was being built in the Wrekin area of Shropshire in 1968, it was named Telford in his honour.

Bibliography

Thomas Telford L. T. C. Rolt, Longmans (1958)
Ditto, Penguin (1979), ISBN 014022064X

George Stephenson

George Stephenson (June 9, 1781 – August 12, 1848) was a British engineer who designed a famous and historically important steam-powered locomotive named Rocket, and is known as the Father of British Steam Railways.

George Stephenson was born in Wylam, England, 9.3 miles (15 km) west of Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1748, a wagonway -- an arrangement similar to a railway, but with wooden tracks and designed to support horse-drawn carts -- had been built from the Wylam colliery to the River Tyne, running for several miles (several km). The young Stephenson grew up near it, and in 1802 gained employment as an engine-man at a coal mine. For the next ten years his knowledge of steam engines increased, until in 1812 he stopped operating them for a living, and started building them. George Stephenson

Stephenson designed his first locomotive in 1814, a travelling engine designed for hauling coal on a coal site. Named Blucher, it could haul 30 tons of coal in a load, and was the first successful flanged wheel adhesion locomotive (which is to say, it was the first locomotive to use flanged wheels to rest on the track, and that its traction depended only on the contact between the wheel and the track). Over the next five years, he built sixteen more engines.

As his success grew, Stephenson was hired to build an 8 mile (13 km) railway from Hetton to Sunderland. The finished result used a combination of gravity pulling the load down inclines and locomotives for level and upward stretches, and was the first ever railway to use no animal power at all.

In 1821, a project began to build the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Originally the plan was to use horses to draw coal carts over metal rails, but after company director Edward Pease met with Stephenson he agreed to change plans. Work began in 1822, and in September 1825, Stephenson completed the first locomotive for the new railroad; named at first Active, it was soon renamed Locomotion. The Stockton and Darlington opened on 27 September 1825. Driven by Stephenson, Locomotion hauled an 80 ton load of coal and flour for nine miles (15 km) over two hours, reaching a speed of 24 miles per hour (39 km/h) over one stretch. The first purpose-built passenger car (dubbed Experiment) was also attached, and held a load of dignitaries for the opening journey. It was the first time passenger traffic had ever been run on a steam-driven locomotive railway.

While building the S&D railway, Stephenson had noticed that even small inclines greatly reduced the speed of his locomotives. One might add that even slight declines would have made the primitive brakes next to useless. He came to the conclusion that railways should be kept as level as possible. He used this knowledge while working on the Bolton and Leigh Railroad and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, executing a series of difficult cuts, embankments, and stone viaducts to smooth the route the railways took.

As the Liverpool & Manchester approached completion in 1829, the directors of that company arranged for a competition to decide who would build the locomotives for the new railway. The Rainhill Trials were run in October of that year. Stephenson's entry was Rocket, and its impressive performance in winning the contest made it arguably the most famous machine in the world.

When the L&MR opened on 15 September 1830, the opening ceremony was a considerable event, drawing luminaries from the government and industry, including the then Prime Minister the Duke of Wellington. The day was marred by the death of William Huskisson (Member of Parliament for Liverpool) who was struck and killed by Rocket, but the railroad was a resounding success. Stephenson became a very famous man, and was offered the position of chief engineer for a wide variety of other railroads.

Rich and successful for the remainder of his career, George Stephenson passed away on 12 August 1848 in Chesterfield, England.

Stephenson's son, Robert Stephenson, was also a noted locomotive engineer, and was heavily involved in the creation of many of his father's engines from Locomotion onwards. Joseph Locke was initially apprenticed to George Stephenson, eventually being promoted to chief engineer on some of the schemes he instigated (e.g. the Grand Junction Railway).

Stephenson gives his name to George Stephenson College, founded in 2001 on the University of Durham's Queen's Campus in Stockton-on-Tees.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Isambard Kingdom Brunel (April 9, 1806–September 15, 1859) was a British engineer, noted for the creation of the Great Western Railway and a series of famous steamships.

The Thames tunnel

The son of noted engineer Sir Marc Isambard Brunel, Isambard K. Brunel was born in Portsmouth, England on April 9, 1806. His father was working there on the block-making machinery of the Portsmouth Block Mills The young Brunel was sent to France to be educated at the College of Caen in Normandy and the Lycée Henri-Quatre in Paris. He rose to prominence when, aged 20, he was appointed as the resident engineer of the Thames Tunnel, his father's greatest achievement. The first major river tunnel ever built, Isambard spent nearly two years trying to drive the horizontal shaft from one side to the other. Two severe incidents of flooding injured the younger Brunel and ended work on the tunnel for several years, though it was eventually completed.

The Great Western Railway

In the mean time, Brunel moved on. In 1833 he was appointed engineer of the Great Western Railway, one of the wonders of Victorian Britain. Running from London to Bristol (and a few years later, to Exeter), the Great Western contained a series of impressive achievements — viaducts, stations, and tunnels — that ignited the imagination of the technically minded Britons of the age. Brunel soon became one of the most famous men in Britain on the back of this interest. Isambard Kindgom Brunel before the launching of the Great Eastern
Brunel made the controversial choice of using broad gauge (7 ft 0.25 in or 2.14 m) for the line. According to many railway historians, this was an advantageous choice, not least because it permitted carriages with a width of 10 ft 6 in, significantly wider than those of the railway's competitors; but nonetheless it eventually had to be changed to bring it in line with standard British railway gauge (4 ft 8.5 in or 1.435 m), the last broad gauge rails being converted to standard gauge in 1892.

Brunel's "atmospheric caper"

Another of Brunel's interesting though ultimately unsuccessful technical innovations was the atmospheric railway, the extension of the GWR southward from Exeter towards Plymouth (technically the South Devon Railway (SDR), though supported by the GWR). Instead of using locomotives, the trains were moved by Cleggs and Samudas Patent system of atmospheric (vacuum) traction, the evacuation being done by stationary engines at a series of pumping stations. The section from Exeter to Newton (now Newton Abbot) was completed on this principle, and trains ran at approximately 20 miles per hour (32 km/h). 15 inch (381 mm) pipes were used on the level portions, and 22 inch (559 mm) pipes were intended for the steeper gradients. Unfortunately the technology required the use of leather flaps to seal the air pipes, the leather had to be kept supple by the use of tallow, and tallow is attractive to rats; the result was inevitable, and air-powered vacuum service lasted less than a year, from 1847 (experimental services began in September; operationally from February 1848) to September 10, 1848. The accounts of the SDR for 1848 suggest that the atmospheric traction cost 3s 1d per mile (£0.10/km), compared to 1s 4d (£0.04/km) for conventional steam power. The pumping station at Starcross, on the estuary of the River Exe, remains as a striking landmark, and a reminder of the atmospheric railway — which is also commemorated in the name of the village pub. A section of the pipe, without the leather covers, is preserved in Didcot Railway Museum.

Transatlantic shipping

Even before the Great Western Railway was opened, Brunel was moving on to his next project — transatlantic shipping. He used his prestige to convince his railway company employers to build the Great Western, at the time by far the largest steamship in the world. It first sailed in 1837. The Great Britain followed in 1843, and was the first iron-hulled, propeller-driven ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

Building on these successes, Brunel turned to a third ship in 1852, even larger than both of its predecessors. The Great Eastern was cutting edge technology for its time — it was the largest ship ever built until the RMS Lusitania launched in 1906 — and it soon ran over budget and over schedule in the face of a series of difficult technical problems. The ship is widely perceived as a white elephant. Though a failure at its original purpose of passenger travel, it eventually found a role as an oceanic telegraph cable-layer.

Bridges

Besides the railway and steam ships, he was also involved in the construction of several lengthy bridges, including the Royal Albert Bridge near Plymouth, and an unusual telescopic bridge in Bridgwater. He also designed the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, but did not live to see it constructed. His colleagues and admirers in the Institution of Civil Engineers felt the bridge would be a fitting memorial, and started to raise new funds and to amend the design. Work started in 1862, and was complete by 1864, five years after Brunel's death.

Illnesses and death of Brunel

In 1843, while performing a conjuring trick for the amusement of his children, he accidentally swallowed a half-sovereign coin which became lodged in his windpipe. A special pair of forceps failed to remove it, as did a machine to shake it loose devised by Brunel himself. Eventually, at the suggestion of Sir Marc, Isambard was strapped to a board, turned upside-down, and the coin was jerked free.

Brunel suffered a stroke in 1859, just before the Great Eastern made its first voyage to New York. He died ten days later and is buried, like his father, at Kensal Green Cemetery in London. His son, Henri Marc Brunel, also enjoyed some success as a civil engineer.

Commemorating Brunel

There is an anecdote which states that Box Tunnel on the Great Western railway line is placed such that the sun shines all the way through it on Brunel's birthday. For more information, see the entry on the tunnel.

Many of Brunel's original papers and designs are now held in the Brunel collection at the University of Bristol.

Brunel was included in the top 10 of the 100 Greatest Britons poll conducted by the BBC and voted for by the public. Each of the finalists in the poll was featured in an hour-long documentary. An admiring Jeremy Clarkson wrote and presented the programme about Brunel. In the second round of voting, which concluded on November 24, 2002, Brunel placed second behind Winston Churchill. There are many monuments and memorials commemorating his achievements in the GWR area, including a statue at Paddington station, and a collection of streets around St David's station in Exeter, giving access to student residences of the University of Exeter, that bear his names — Isambard Terrace, Kingdom Mews, and Brunel Close. He is also the namesake of Brunel University in West London.

James Watt

James Watt (January 19, 1736 - August 19, 1819) was a Scottish mathematician and engineer whose improvements to the steam engine were a key stage in the Industrial Revolution.

He was born in Greenock, Scotland, and lived and worked in Birmingham, England. He was a key member of the Lunar Society. Many of his papers are in Birmingham Central Library.
James Watt
Timeline

1736: Born in Greencock, Scotland.
1754: Learnt the trade of mathematical-instrument making in London before returning to Glasgow.
1763: Repaired a Newcomen steam engine, which started him thinking about ways to improve the engine.
1765: While wandering through the Glasgow Green's "Golf Course", comes upon the idea of a separate condensing chamber for the steam engine.
1765–1770: Erected a range of full-size Newcomen engines in Scotland.
1767: Surveyor of Forth and Clyde canal.
1769: Patented separate condensing chamber for steam engine.
1774: Started a business in Soho, near Birmingham, with Matthew Boulton to manufacture his improved Watt steam engine.
1781: Converted reciprocal engine motion to rotary motion.
1782: Invented double-acting engine.
1784: Patented a steam locomotive.
1788: Adapted centrifugal governor for use on steam engine.
1790: Adopted a pressure gauge.
1800: Retired to Heathfield Hall near Birmingham.

Engineering Achievements

Watt adopted the centrifugal governor to regulate the speed of a steam engine. (This was already in use for governing wind and watermills.) He invented the parallel motion linkage to convert circular motion to an approximate straight line motion (of which he was most proud) and the steam indicator to measure steam pressure in the cylinder throughout the working cycle of the engine, so showing its efficiency.

Watt greatly helped the development of the embryonic steam engine into a viable and economic means of power generation. He realised that the Newcomen steam engine was wasting nearly three quarters of the steam energy in heating the piston and chamber. Watt developed a separate condenser chamber which significantly increased the efficiency. Further refinements (insulation of the steam cylinder, the double-acting engine, a counter, an indicator, and a throttle valve) made the steam engine his life's work.

Watt was opposed to the use of high pressure steam, and is held by some to have held back the technical development of the steam engine by other engineers, until his patents expired in 1800. With his partner Matthew Boulton he battled against rival engineers such as Jonathan Hornblower who tried to develop engines which did not fall foul of his 'catch-all' patents. Boulton proved an excellent businessman, and both men eventually made fortunes.

He introduced a unit called the horsepower to compare the power output of steam engines, his version of the unit being equivalent to 550 foot-pounds per second (about 745.7 watts).

Watt also invented several other things, not least a copying device for letters.

Legacy

James Watt's model of the steam engine converted a machine of limited use to one of efficiency and many applications. It was the foremost energy source in the emerging Industrial Revolution, and greatly multiplied its productive capacity. (Without it, humans might have continued to provide power.) It was also essential in later transportation advancements, such as the steamboat and locomotive.

Remembrance

The SI unit of power, the watt, is named after him. So is, at least in part, Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University.

He is also remembered by the Moonstones, two individual statues, and a statue of him, Boulton and Murdoch, by William Bloye, and a school named in his honour, all in Birmingham.

There are 4 colleges named after him in Scotland, James Watt College in Kilwinning (North Ayrshire Campus) and Greenock (2 in Greenock, Finnart Campus and Waterfront Campus) and a campus in Largs.

Matthew Boulton's home, Soho House, is now a museum, commemorating the work of both men.

There are over 50 roads or streets named after him, in the UK.

William Morris

William Morris (March 24, 1834 - October 3, 1896) was one of the principal founders of the British Arts and Crafts Movement and is best known as a designer of wallpaper and patterned fabrics, a writer of poetry and fiction, and an early founder of the socialist movement in Britain.

The tragic conflict in Morris's life was his unfulfilled desire to create affordable — or even free — beautiful things for common people, whereas the real-life result was always the creation of extremely expensive objects for the discerning few. (In his utopian novel News from Nowhere, everybody works for pleasure only, and beautifully handcrafted things are given away for free to those who simply appreciate.)
William Morris, socialist and innovator in the arts & crafts movement
Morris was born in Walthamstow near London. His family was wealthy, and he went to Oxford (Exeter College), where he became influenced by John Ruskin and met his life-long friends and collaborators, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown, and Philip Webb. He also met his wife, Jane Burden, a working-class woman whose pale skin and coppery hair were considered by Morris and his friends the epitome of beauty.

The artistic movement Morris and the others made famous was the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. They eschewed the tawdry industrial manufacture of decorative arts and architecture and favoured a return to hand-craftsmanship, raising craftsmen to the status of artists.

Morris left Oxford to join an architecture firm, but soon found himself drawn more and more to the decorative arts. He and Webb built Red House at Bexleyheath in Kent, Morris's wedding gift to Jane. It was here his design ideas began to take physical shape. The brick clocktower in Bexleyheath town centre had, in 1996, a bust of Morris added in an original niche.

In 1861, he founded the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. with Gabriel Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Madox Brown, and Philip Webb. Throughout his life, he continued to work in his own firm, although the firm changed names. Its most famous incarnation was as Morris and Company. His designs are still sold today under licences given to Sanderson and Sons and Liberty of London.

In 1877 he founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. His preservation work resulted indirectly in the founding of the National Trust.

Morris and his daughter May were amongst Britain's first socialists, working directly with Eleanor Marx and Engels to begin the socialist movement. In 1883 he joined the Social Democratic Federation, and in 1884 he organised the Socialist League. One of his best known works, News from Nowhere, is a utopian novel describing a socialist society. This side of Morris's work is well-discussed in the biography (subtitled 'Romantic to Revolutionary') by E. P. Thompson.

Morris and Rossetti rented a country house, Kelmscott Manor near Lechlade, Gloucestershire, as a summer retreat, but it soon became a retreat for Rossetti and Jane Morris to have a long-lasting affair. To escape the discomfort, Morris often travelled to Iceland, where he researched Icelandic legends that later became the basis of poems and novels.

Morris's book, The Wood Between the Worlds, is considered to have heavily influenced C. S. Lewis's Narnia series, while J. R. R. Tolkien was inspired by Morris's reconstructions of early Germanic life in 'The House of the Wolfings' and 'The Roots of the Mountains'.

After the death of Tennyson in 1892, Morris was offered the Poet Laureateship, but declined.

William Morris died in 1896 and was interred in the churchyard at Kelmscott village in Oxfordshire.

The Kelmscott Press

In January 1891 Morris founded the Kelmscott Press at Hammersmith, London, in order to produce examples of improved printing and book design. He designed clear typefaces, such as his roman 'golden' type, which was inspired by that of the early Venetian printer Nicolaus Jenson, and medievalizing decorative borders for books that drew their inspiration from the incunabula of the 15th century and their woodcut illustrations. Selection of paper and ink, and concerns for the overall integration of type and decorations on the page made the Kelmscott Press the most famous of the private presses of the Arts and Crafts movement. It operated until 1898, producing 53 volumes, and inspiring other private presses. Amongst book lovers, his edition of The Canterbury Tales is considered one of the most beautiful books ever produced.

Literary Works

The Defence of Guinevere, and other Poems (1858)
The Life and Death of Jason (1867)
The Earthly Paradise (1868-70)
The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Nibelungs (1876)
Love is Enough, or The Freeing of Pharamond (1872)
A Dream of John Ball (1886)
The House of the Wolfings (1888)
The Roots of the Mountains (1889)
News from Nowhere (1890)
The Story of the Glittering Plain (1890)
The Well at the World's End (1892)
The Wood Beyond the World (1892)
Morris also translated large numbers of mediaeval and classical works, including collections of Icelandic sagas such as Three Northern Love Stories (1875), Virgil's Aeneid (1875), and Homer's Odyssey (1887)

The Morris Societies in both Britain and the US are active in preserving Morris's work and ideas.

Mary Quant

Mary Quant (born February 11, 1934) is an English fashion designer one of the many designers who took credit for inventing the miniskirt and hot pants।


Born in Kent, Quant studied illustration at Goldsmith's College before taking a job with a couture milliner. In October 1955, she teamed up with her husband Alexander Plunkett Greene, and an accountant Archie McNair, to open a clothes shop on the Kings Road in London called Bazaar.

Following the positive reaction to a pair of "mad house pyjamas" designed for the opening, and dissatisfied with the variety of clothes available to her, Quant decided to make her own range of clothing. Initially working solo, she was soon employing a handful of machinists, producing unusual clothes she considered to be fun.

Her skirts had been getting shorter since about 1958 - a development she considered to be practical and liberating, allowing women the ability to run for a bus. The miniskirt, for which she is arguably most famous, became one of the defining fashions of the 1960s. The miniskirt was developed separately by Andre Courrèges, and there is disagreement as to who came up with the idea first.

In addition to the miniskirt, Quant is often credited with inventing the coloured and patterned tights that tended to accompany the garment, although these are also attributed to Cristobal Balenciaga.

Irrespective of whether she invented these items, Quant was one of their major popularisers, largely thanks to the fact that Bazaar was a popular haunt for the fashionable Chelsea Set of "Swinging London". By 1961, Quant had opened a second Bazaar in Knightsbridge and by 1963 she was exporting to the USA. To keep up with demand, Quant went into mass-production, setting up the Ginger Group.

Quant's popularity was at its peak in the mid 1960s, during which time she produced the dangerously short micro-mini skirt, "paint-box" make-up, and plastic raincoats. She was described as being the leading fashion force outside Paris.

In 1966 Quant was appointed an OBE for services to the fashion industry.

In the late 1960s, Quant launched hot pants, which was her last big fashion development. Through the 1970s and 1980s she concentrated on household goods and make-up.

In 2000, she resigned as director of Mary Quant Ltd., her cosmetics company, after a Japanese buy-out. There are over 200 Mary Quant Colour shops in Japan, where Quant fashions continue to enjoy some popularity.

Rudolf Nureyev

Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev (17 March 1938 – 6 January 1993), Russian-born dancer, is regarded by many critics as one of the greatest male dancers of the 20th century, alongside Vaslav Nijinsky and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Nureyev was born in a train near Irkutsk, while his mother was travelling across Siberia to Vladivostok, where his father, a Red Army political commissar of Tatar descent, was stationed. He was raised in a village near Ufa in Soviet Bashkiria. As a child he was encouraged to dance in Bashkir folk performances and his precocity was soon noticed.

Due to the disruption of Soviet cultural life caused by World War II, Nureyev was unable to enroll in a major ballet school until 1955, when he was sent to the Vaganova Choreographic Institute, attached to the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad. Despite his late start, he was soon recognised as the most gifted dancer the school had seen for many years. Already, however, his extremely difficult temperament was evident. In retrospect it seems obvious that his personal problems were mainly due to internal conflict over his sexuality. Rudolf Nureyev, 1961
Rudolf Nureyev, 1961

Within two years Nureyev was one of Russia's best-known dancers, in a country which revered the ballet and made national heroes of its stars. Soon he enjoyed the rare privilege of travel outside the Soviet Union, when he danced in Vienna at the International Youth Festival. Not long after, for disciplinary reasons, he was told he would not be allowed to go abroad again. He was condemned to tours of the Russian provinces.

In 1961 Nureyev's luck turned. The Kirov's leading male dancer, Konstantin Sergeyev, was injured, and at the last minute Nureyev was chosen to replace him in a performance in Paris. In Paris, his performances electrified audiences and critics. But Nureyev broke the rules about mingling with foreigners, and was told he would be sent home. Realising he would probably not be allowed abroad again, on 17 June at Charles De Gaulle International Airport, he defected. He did not see Russia again until 1989, when he visited at the special invitation of Mikhail Gorbachev.

Within a week Nureyev had been signed up by the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas and was performing The Sleeping Beauty with Nina Vyroubova. Nureyev was an instant celebrity in the west. His dramatic defection, his outstanding skills, and, it must be said, his astonishing good looks, made him an international star. This gave him the power to decide where and with whom he would dance.

Nureyev's defection also gave him the personal freedom he had been denied in the Soviet Union. On a tour of Denmark he met Erik Bruhn, another dancer ten years his senior, who became his lover, his closest friend and his protector (mainly from his own folly) for many years. The relationship was a stormy one, for Nureyev was highly sexually promiscuous. Bruhn was director of the Royal Swedish Ballet from 1967 to 1972 and Artistic Director of the National Ballet of Canada from 1983 until his death in 1986. One of the men that Nureyev is said to have had an affair with was movie star Anthony Perkins.

At the same time Nureyev met Margot Fonteyn, the leader British dancer of her time, with whom he formed a professional partnership and a close friendship. She brought him to the Royal Ballet in London, which remained his base during the rest of his dancing career. Together Nureyev and Fonteyn forever transformed such cornerstone ballets as Swan Lake and Giselle.

Nureyev was immediately in demand by film-makers, and in 1962 he made his screen debut in a film version of Les Sylphides. In 1976 he played Rudolph Valentino in Ken Russell's film, but he had neither the talent nor the temperament for a serious acting career. He branched into modern dance with the Dutch National Ballet in 1968. In 1972 Robert Helpmann invited him to tour Australia with his own production of Don Quixote, his directorial debut.

During the 1970s, Nureyev appeared in several movies and toured the United States in a revival of the Broadway musical The King and I. His guest appearance on the then-struggling television series The Muppet Show is credited for boosting the series to worldwide success. In 1982 he became a naturalized Austrian. In 1983 he was appointed director of the Paris Opera Ballet, where as well as directing he continued to dance and to promote younger dancers. Despite advancing illness towards the end of his tenure, he worked tirelessly, staging new versions of old standbys and commissioning some of the most groundbreaking choreographic works of his time.

Nureyev's talent, beauty, and charm caused him to be forgiven many things, but stardom did little to improve his temperament. He was notoriously impulsive and did not have much patience with rules, limitations and hierarchical order. Some saw this as unreliability and rudeness to those he worked with. He mixed with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol, and developed a reputation for intolerance of non-celebrities, but he kept up old friendships in and outside the ballet world for decades, being a loyal and generous friend. His interests were widespread and he loved to discuss all kinds of subjects, showing an amazing wealth of knowledge in many fields. By the end of the 1970s he moved into his 40s and faced the inevitable decline of his amazing physical prowess, he unfortunately continued to tackle the big classical roles for far too long, and his rather undistinguished performances in the late 1980s disappointed many of his admirers.

Nureyev's influence on the world of ballet changed especially the perception of male dancers; in his own productions of the classics the male roles got much more choreography than in earlier productions. The second very important influence was his crossing the borders between classical ballet and modern dance by dancing both, although having been trained as a classical dancer. Today it is absolutely normal for dancers to get training in both styles but Nureyev was the one who started this and is was a sensation and even much criticized in his days.

When AIDS appeared in France in about 1982 (as well as everywhere else), Nureyev, like many French homosexual men, took little notice. He presumably contracted HIV at some point in the early 1980s. For several years he simply denied that anything was wrong with his health: when, in about 1990, he became undeniably ill, he pretended he had several other ailments. He refused whatever treatments were available at that time.

Eventually, however, he had to face the fact that he was dying. He won back the admiration of many of his detractors by his courage during this period. The loss of his looks pained him, but he continued to struggle through public appearances. At his last appearance, at a 1992 production of The Bayadère at the Palais Garnier, Nureyev received an emotional standing ovation from the audience. The French Culture Minister, Jack Lang, presented him with France's highest cultural award, the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Artes et Lettres. He died in Paris, France, a few months later, aged 54.

Patrick Swayze

Patrick Wayne Swayze, (born 18 August 1952), is a dancer, actor and singer, memorable for his roles in the films Dirty Dancing (1987), "Roadhouse", Ghost (1990), Black Dog (1998), and Donnie Darko (2001). He also famous for the North and South miniseries.

The son of Jessie Wayne Swayze and choreographer Patsy Yvonne Helen Karnes, he was born in Houston, Texas, United States. He formally trained at the Harkness and Joffrey Ballet Schools in New York City. His first professional appearance was as a dancer for Disney on Parade, then in the Broadway production of Grease, before his debut film role as Ace in Skatetown, U.S.A. (1979). He also appeared in the M*A*S*H episode Blood Brothers.

Patrick Swayze has received Golden Globe Award nominations for his roles in Dirty Dancing, Ghost and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995). Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004), a quasi-sequel to Dirty Dancing, had Swayze cast as a dance instructor, essentialy a cameo role. Patrick Swayze
He is married to actress Lisa Niemi. His brother Don Swayze is also an actor.

He is also known for his spirituality, and is reportedly a Scientologist.

Patrick Swayze has also bred Arabian horses. His best-known horse was the late Tammen, a chestnut Arabian stallion.

Slang:A "Patrick Swayze" or "PS" for short is known in the southern states as a "Ghost fart". This is derived from Patrick Swayze and Whoopi Goldberg's movie Ghost.

Selected Filmography

2005 Icon Jason - Role: Monk (Post-production)
2004 Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, Role: Dance class instructor
2003 11:14, Role: Frank
2001 Donnie Darko, Role: Jim Cunningham
1995 To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, Role: Vida Boheme
1993 Father Hood, Role: Jack Charles
1991 Point Break, Role: Bohdi
1990 Ghost, Role: Sam Wheat
1989 Next of Kin, Role: Truman Gates
1989 Road House, Role: Dalton
1988 Tiger Warsaw, Role: Chuck "Tiger" Warsaw
1987 Dirty Dancing, Role: Johnny Castle
1987 Steel Dawn, Role: Nomad
1986 Youngblood, Role: Derek Sutton
1984 Red Dawn, Role: Jed Eckert
1984 Grandview, U.S.A., Role: Ernie "Slam" Webster
1983 Uncommon Valor, Role: Kevin Scott
1983 The Outsiders, Role: Darrel "Darry" Curtis

Anna Pavlova

Anna Pavlova

Anna Pavlovna Pavlova (January 31, 1881 (Old Style)/February 12, 1881 (New Style) - January 23, 1931) was the most famous ballet dancer of the early 20th century.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia to a poor peasant family, she trained at the Imperial Ballet School until she graduated at age 18. Then danced with the Mariinsky Theatre. In the first years of the Ballets Russes she worked briefly for Serge Diaghilev before founding her own company and performing throughout the world.

Her most famous showpiece was The Dying Swan choreographed for her by Michel Fokine. The music piece was the Swan part of Camille Saint-Saëns the Carnival of the Animals. Anna Pavlova - Portrait by Jean Thomassen
Anna Pavlova
(portrait by Jean Thomassen)
She died of pleurisy in The Hague, Netherlands while touring. Her remains were recently moved to the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

The pavlova dessert was named after her, although its origins are disputed. Both Australia and New Zealand have claimed the credit.

Ronnie Biggs

Ronald Arthur Biggs, born 8 August 1929 in London's East End (known commonly as Ronnie Biggs), is a British prisoner who is known for his minor role in the Great Train Robbery of 1963.

He and others stole £2.6 million from a mail train. After he was convicted he escaped from HM Prison Wandsworth in 1965 by scaling the wall with a rope ladder, got papers and a new face in Paris, and fled in 1970 to Adelaide, South Australia. He worked in Set Construction at Channel 10 when a reporter recognised him. He then fled toBlackburn North, in Melbourne, Australia, staying for some time before fleeing to Brazil in the same year. He allegedly had only £200 left when he arrived in Brazil. His wife, Charmian, and two sons stayed behind in Australia. He spent the next three decades of his life as a fugitive and became somewhat of a media celebrity. Despite being a rather minor figure in the actual robbery he could be argued to have gained the most actual profit from it.

In 1974 he was found by the British police in Rio de Janeiro but couldn't be extradited because his current girlfriend (Raimunda de Castro, a nightclub dancer and prostitute) was pregnant. Brazilian law wouldn't allow the parent of a Brazilian child to be extradited. Unfortunately, his felon status also prevented him from working, but nothing prevented him from profiting from Scotland Yard's misfortune. "Ronnie Biggs" coffee cups and t-shirts suddenly started showing up in tourist traps throughout Rio.

Supposedly, he went back and forth to the UK several times during the making of a documentary about the Great Train Robbery, always in disguise. Also, he recorded vocals on two songs for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, Malcolm McLaren's film about the Sex Pistols. The basic tracks for "The Biggest Blow (A Punk Prayer)" (aka "No One is Innocent") and "Belsen Was a Gas" were recorded with guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook at a studio in Brazil shortly after the Sex Pistols' final performance, with overdubs being added in a British studio at a later date. "The Biggest Blow" was released as a single in the UK and reached #6 on the British singles charts, with the sleeve showing Martin Bormann playing bass with the group (in actuality this was American actor James Jeter).

Following the extradition attempt, Ronnie collaborated with Bruce Henry, an American bass player, Jaime Shields and Aureo de Souza to record "Mailbag Blues", a musical narrative of his life that he intended to use a movie soundtrack. This album was re-released in 2004 by whatmusic.com.

In 1981 Biggs was kidnapped by a gang of adventurers who managed to smuggle him to Barbados, hoping to collect some reward from the British police. The coup was discovered, though, and Biggs made use of legal loopholes to have himself sent back to Brazil. In February 2006 Channel 4 aired a documentary featuring dramatisations of the attempted kidnap and interviews with the ex-British Army personnel who carried it out. The team was headed by security consultant Patrick King. In the documentary King claims that the kidnap may have in fact been a deniable operation.

Ronnie's Brazilian son by Raimunda, Michael, would eventually become a member of a child band of enormous success (Turma do Balão Mágico), bringing a welcome new source of income to his father, who would spend with abandon. In a short time, however, the band faded into obscurity and dissolved, leaving father and son in relatively dire straits again.

In 1991, Biggs sung vocals for the song "Carnival In Rio (Punk Was)" by German punk band Die Toten Hosen.

In 2001 Biggs announced to The Sun newspaper that he would be willing to return to the UK. He had suffered a stroke the previous year and was in poor health. His stated desire was to "walk into a pub a British man and have a pint of bitter". It is believed by some that he was probably only after the free health care available.

He returned on 7 May 2001, and was re-imprisoned for his crimes. His trip back on a private jet was paid by The Sun, which has also reportedly paid Michael Biggs £20,000, plus other expenses. Ronald Biggs had 28 years of his sentence left. Since his return he has undergone numerous health scares, including two heart attacks, and has failed to get his sentence overturned or reduced.

On 14 November 2001, Biggs petitioned Governor Hynd of HMP Belmarsh for early release on compassionate grounds based on his ill health. He had been treated four times by the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich in less than six months. His health was deteriorating rapidly and he asked to be released to the care of his son for his remaining days. The application was denied.

On 10th August 2005, it was reported that Biggs had contracted MRSA. His lawyers, seeking for Biggs's release on grounds of compassion, said that their client's death was likely imminent.

On 26 October 2005, the Home Secretary Charles Clarke declined his appeal stating that his illness is not deemed terminal. Home Office compassion policy is to release prisoners with three months left to live. Biggs is nearly 80 years old, continues to need a tube for feeding and has difficulty speaking.

Guy Fawkes

Guido (Guy) Fawkes (also spelt contemporaneously Faukes) (April 13, 1570 - January 31, 1606), who also used the pseudonym John Johnson, was a member of a group of Catholic conspirators who endeavoured to blow up King James I and all the members of both branches of the Parliament of England while they were assembled in the House of Lords building for the formal opening of the 1605 session of Parliament. The plot was uncovered and the barrels of gunpowder defused before any damage was done. Fawkes was a convert to Catholicism, which occurred at about the age of 16 if his admission of recusancy at his preliminary interrogation is to be believed.

Fawkes was born in Stonegate in York, where he was baptised in the church of St. Michael-le-Belfry, and attended St Peter's School. He served for many years as a soldier gaining considerable expertise with explosives. In 1593 he enlisted in the army of Archduke Albert of Austria in the Netherlands, fighting against the Protestant United Provinces in the Eighty Years' War. In 1596 he was present at the siege and capture of Calais but by 1602 he had risen no higher than the rank of ensign.


Gunpowder Plot

The beginnings of the Plot
The Gunpowder Plot was concocted in May of 1604 with Robert Catesby, Thomas Percy, John Wright, Robert Keyes, Thomas Wintour and Robert Wintour. Fawkes, who had considerable military experience and a good understanding of explosives, had been introduced to Catesby by a man named Hugh Owen. Some accounts indicate that Thomas Wintour was the prime mover in all of this, and that Fawkes was the tool towards the ultimate execution of the plot.

Planning and preparation
In March 1605, the conspirators rented a cellar beneath Parliament through Thomas Percy (also spelt Percye); Fawkes assisted in filling the room with gunpowder which was concealed beneath bric-a-brac in the cellars of the House of Lords building. The 36 barrels belonging to John Whynniard contained an estimated 2500 kg of gunpowder. The explosion could have reduced many of the buildings in the Old Palace of Westminster complex, including Abbey, to rubble and would have blown out windows in the surrounding area for a distance up to almost a mile.

At around Easter 1605, Fawkes left Dover for Calais, travelling to St Omer and thence to Brussels. According to the confession made by Fawkes on November 5 1605, he there met with Hugh Owen, and Sir William Stanley. After that he made a pilgrimage in Brabant. He returned to England at the end of August or early September, again by way of Calais.

There are suggestions that the original plan was to dig a tunnel from the cellar of an adjacent building by mining and then plant the explosives under the meeting chamber in the House of Lords.

Discovery and arrest
At around midnight November 4 or in the very early hours of November 5th, Fawkes, posing as a Mr John Johnson, was arrested in the cellar by a party of armed men led by Sir Thomas Knevytt (or Knevett). In Fawkes' possession were a watch, slow matches and touchpaper. On arrest Fawkes did not deny his intentions, stating that it had been his purpose to destroy the King and the Parliament.

Interrogation of the prisoners
Fawkes was brought into the king's bedchamber, where the ministers had hastily assembled, at one o'clock in the morning. He maintained an attitude of cool defiance, making no secret of his intentions. He replied to the king, who asked why he would kill him, that the pope had excommunicated him, that dangerous diseases require a desperate remedy, adding fiercely to the Scottish courtiers who surrounded him that one of his objects was to blow the Scots back into Scotland.

Later in the morning, before noon, he was again interrogated. He was questioned on the nature of his accomplices, the involvement of Thomas Percy, what letters he had received from overseas, and whether he had spoken with Hugh Owen.

He was taken to the Tower of London and there interrogated under torture. Since torture was forbidden except by the express instruction of the monarch or the Privy Council, King James I in a letter of November 6 stated: "The gentler tortours are to be first used unto him, et sic per gradus ad maiora tenditur [and thus by increase to the worst], and so God speed your goode worke". Initially he resisted torture. On November 8, Fawkes verbally confessed revealed the names of his co-conspirators, and recounted the full details of the plot on November 9. He made a signed confession on November 10; his signature after torture on the rack is strikingly shaky.

Trial

A nominal trial then ensued on January 27, 1606 at which the sentences had already been predetermined. On January 31, Fawkes, Wintour, and a number of others implicated in the conspiracy were taken to Old Palace Yard in Westminster. There they were hanged, drawn and quartered.

Aftermath

According to historian Antonia Fraser, the gunpowder was taken to the Tower of London and would have been reissued if in good condition, or otherwise sold for recycling. However a sample of the gunpowder may have survived -- in March 2002 workers at the British Library, investigating archives of John Evelyn, found a box containing various samples of gunpowder and several notes: "Gunpowder 1605 in a paper inscribed by John Evelyn. Powder with which that villain Faux would have blown up the parliament." and "Gunpowder. Large package is supposed to be Guy Fawkes' gunpowder." and "But there was none left! WEH 1952".

According to historian Ronald Hutton, when it was moved to the Tower of London magazine after Guy Fawkes was caught, it was discovered to be `decayed'; that is, it had done what gunpowder always did when left to sit for too long, and separated into its component chemical parts, rendering it harmless. If Guy had plunged in the torch with Parliament all ready above him, all that would have happened would have been a damp splutter.

In England, the failure of the gunpowder plot is celebrated annually on Guy Fawkes Night.

Popularity

Guy Fawkes appears in the 2002 List of "100 Great Britons" (sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public), alongside such other greats as David Beckham, Aleister Crowley, Winston Churchill and Johnny Rotten. Cynical Britons are sometimes known to comment that Guy Fawkes was the only man to go to Parliament with honourable intentions.

In an interesting example of semantic progression, Guy Fawkes has become immortalised by one of the most common words in the English language, particularly in American spoken English. The burning on 5 November of an effigy of Fawkes, known as a "guy," led to the use of the word "guy" as a term for "a person of grotesque appearance" and then to a general reference for a man, as in "some guy called for you." In the 20th century, under the influence of American popular culture, "guy" gradually replaced "fellow," "bloke," "chap" and other such words there and the practice is spreading throughout the English-speaking world.

The story of Guy Fawkes was a major inspiration for Alan Moore's post-nuclear war tale of a fascist Britain, V for Vendetta. The main character in that story is modeled on Fawkes.