(read time: 3 mins.)

When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Elżbieta Zawacka joined the Polish underground resistance. Her life became a catalogue of selfless, heroic acts. On 3 May 2006—at the age of 97—she was promoted to brigadier general of the Polish Land Forces.

Elżbieta Zawacka was born in 1909 in the city of Toruń. The city had passed into Prussian hands during the Second Partition of Poland in 1793 and, by the time of her birth, was part of the German Empire.

This enforced German nationhood would not suppress Elżbieta’s fierce nationalistic passion. What followed was a life of such improbable range and courage that, were it submitted as fiction, a sensible editor would send it back with a note: “Too much”. So consider this the highlights…

Poland regained independence on 11 November 1918, emerging from 123 years of partition as the First World War ended. Elżbieta joined the newly formed PWK (Women’s Military Training) in December 1930. The organisation prepared Polish women for auxiliary roles in national defence.

By 1937, Zawacka had risen to become commander of PWK’s Silesia district, while continuing to teach mathematics. By the outbreak of the Second World War, she had helped train an estimated 700,000 women in military auxiliary skills.

When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, ‘Zo’ joined the underground resistance without hesitation. As a courier for the Home Army, she had crossed enemy borders more than a hundred times—and that was by April 1942. She carried intelligence in books, food parcels, toothpaste tubes and cigarette lighters—her fluent German keeping the suspicion of border guards at bay.

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In 1943, Elżbieta undertook a thousand-mile journey across occupied Europe—through Germany, France, Andorra, Spain and Gibraltar—to reach the Polish government-in-exile in London, carrying critical intelligence.

While in London, rather than take a well-earned time-out, Zawacka wasted no time lobbying her government to grant women equal rights in the armed forces. She also joined the Polish special forces, training for covert operations. Elżbieta was multi-tasking on steroids.

On 10 September 1943, Zawacka parachuted back into Nazi-occupied Poland to resume operations with the resistance. When the Warsaw Uprising erupted on 1 August 1944, she was thrown into the heart of a desperate attempt to liberate the capital before Soviet forces arrived.

The uprising lasted 63 days before dwindling food and ammunition forced a surrender. The human cost was staggering: 175,000 civilians perished, mostly through mass executions, while 16,000 resistance fighters fell in battle or were executed.

Zo survived the war, but the Soviets now occupied Poland—so once again she resisted. In 1951, she was arrested for anti-communist activities. After four years of torture and interrogation, Elżbieta was released from prison on 24 February 1955.

Her ordeal was far from over. The communist authorities harassed Zo for a further 34 years, until communism finally collapsed in 1989.

In June 1989, Elżbieta lived to see Poland’s first partially free elections since the Second World War. On 3 May 2006—at the age of 97—she was promoted to brigadier general of the Polish Land Forces by President Lech Kaczyński, becoming only the second woman in Polish history to hold that rank.

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(read time: 4 mins.)

Out of the Nativity façade of Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família rises the Tower of Saint Barnabas, capped with a ceramic-covered spire that watches over Barcelona like a lighthouse guarding the coast. The tower was completed on 30 November 1925. Poignantly, it would be the first and last bell tower of the Nativity façade that Gaudí would see finished in his lifetime.

About four weeks ago, I was introduced to a building I’d never seen or heard of. My son came back from Barcelona and shared some photos of an architectural wonder—one that quite literally took his breath away.

It had the look of an enormous cathedral-like candle that someone had left burning far too long. The Gothic spires and edges had begun their slow collapse, wax pooling and drooping in the Barcelona heat, but then everything stopped mid-melt and fixed itself in time.

Each of its towers (eighteen in all I think) looked as if they’d been assembled by an oversized sand artist in an altered state of consciousness, unable to stop finessing their extraordinary creation. Yet somehow the towers might have also grown organically from the earth, outrageously dense in detail, poised to bloom at any moment.

This was Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família.

Antoni Gaudí i Cornet…

…was born in 1852 in Reus, Catalonia. His father, Francesc, was a coppersmith. Antoni spent much of his childhood watching Francesc transform flat sheets of copper into curved vessels using nothing more than heat and a hammer.

These vessels would become the cauldrons used by local distilleries. Gaudí was mesmerised by his father’s ability to convert flat metal into objects that expressed flow and movement—that possessed an almost living quality.

As a sickly child, Antoni spent much of his time away from school. He used those hours to immerse himself in nature—observing the geometric spirals of snail shells, the chaotic branching of trees and the way light forced itself through the gaps in the leaves.

Gaudí the architect

He spent the next ten years studying architecture at Barcelona’s Provincial School of Architecture (now part of Barcelona University). Antoni graduated with the underwhelming endorsement of the school’s director, who observed…

Gaudí’s early commissions largely followed convention, but they revealed hints of the natural forms he’d studied as a child—the curves, the spirals, the organic growth.

Sagrada Família—a lifetime’s obsession

While building Casa Vicens, a richly decorated home for the stockbroker Manuel Vicens. Gaudí’s construction raised some eyebrows.

In 1883, at the age of 31, he was appointed architect for the Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family, better known as the Sagrada Família.

The project to build a Roman Catholic basilica would consume Antoni for the rest of his life.

Construction of the Sagrada Família had been underway for a year when he took control. With little more than a neo-Gothic crypt in place, Gaudí was gifted a near-blank canvas. For the next 43 years, he transformed a conventional Gothic church into something unprecedented.

Year by year, the basilica grew from the earth as if seeds had been scattered across the site and something utterly magical was blooming.

Gaudí found time to complete other works, the most notable of which was Park Güell in 1914, a complex of parks, gardens and buildings. Moorish architecture meets the gingerbread man.

As Gaudí grew older, he moved onto the site. He wore the same threadbare clothes, lived on bread and milk, grew increasingly dishevelled—and didn’t care. He lived only for the Sagrada Família.

The Nativity façade

Every square inch of the structure drew breath from passers by. But one element in particular stopped them in their tracks—The Nativity façade.

The façade is divided into three porticos representing Hope, Faith and Charity. Every square inch is consumed by exploding life: exotic plants, fruit, ducks, geese, pheasants, turkeys, sparrows, nightingales, turtles and tortoises. In the centre of the façade are the baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph flanked by a bull and a mule.

The finish suggests something wild and overgrown rather than meticulously carved. It is extraordinary, and it sits high on my list of places to visit.

The Tower of Saint Barnabas

Out of the Nativity façade rises the Tower of Saint Barnabas, capped with a ceramic-covered spire that watches over Barcelona like a lighthouse guarding the coast.

The tower was completed on 30 November 1925. Poignantly, it would be the first and last bell tower of the Nativity façade that Gaudí would see finished in his lifetime.

Six months later, lost in thought, he was out walking and stepped into the path of an oncoming tram. Mistaken for an anonymous beggar in his shabby clothes, he was rushed to a pauper’s hospital in the city.

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(read time: 2 mins.)

On 28 November 1720, pirate Anne Bonny stood trial in Spanish Town, Jamaica, charged with piracy on the high seas. She was ‘pleading the belly’—seeking immunity on the grounds of being pregnant. Not surprisingly, the less-than-scientific testing received the derision it probably deserved.

The year 1720 was a bad year for the pirates of the Caribbean. The Royal Navy had finally yielded to pressure from London’s merchants whose export profits were dwindling. They called in the pirate hunters.

High on the wanted list was an unlikely culprit…

Anne Bonny

Anne was born around 1697 in County Cork, Ireland, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy lawyer and the housemaid. She grew up in relative comfort until scandal struck—she had married a small-time privateer, James Bonny.

The marriage lasted just long enough for Anne to be disinherited by her father. In 1719, she abandoned her good-for-nothing husband for ’Calico Jack’ Rackham.

Rackham was a budding pirate who earned his colourful nickname from his fondness for calico cotton clothing, rather than any daring deeds on the high seas.

Together they pilfered the sloop ‘William’, assembled a ragtag crew and set sail from Nassau Harbour on a brief but notorious spree—raiding fishing craft and coastal traders from the Bahamas to Jamaica.

Anne had befriended another woman from the crew, Mary Read, who had been disguising herself as a man. They became fierce friends and even fiercer pirates.

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When they raided other boats, the woman wielded their cutlasses and pistols while Calico Jack and many of the male crew were pickling in rum below deck.

One night in October 1720, the party ended. Pirate hunter Captain Jonathan Barnet cornered Calico Jack’s sloop off the coast of Jamaica. With only Anne, Mary and a few conscientious men to put up any meaningful resistance, the sloop was soon overwhelmed.

Pleading the belly

On 28 November 1720, Anne Bonny and Mary Read stood trial in Spanish Town, Jamaica, charged with piracy on the high seas. The evidence was damming. The verdict was swift. Guilty.

Then came the twist.

Anne and Mary were ‘pleading the belly’. By declaring themselves pregnant, the women would be reprieved from the gallows if an inspection by a ‘jury of matrons’ agreed that they were, indeed, pregnant.

In this pre-pregnancy test era, this inspection involved nothing more than prodding and poking the abdomen to detect foetal movement. Not surprisingly, the less-than-scientific testing received the derision it probably deserved.

One physician, who had presumably had his nose put out of joint, bemoaned that women weren’t very effective at detecting their own pregnancies, let alone anyone else’s. In Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders published just two years later, the eponymous heroine admits she’s “no more with child than the judge that tried me”.

The only recorded evidence for both ladies being ‘quick with child’ was the cutting-edge observation that their breasts seemed rather large. Which raises the obvious question: compared to what, exactly?

Fortunately for Anne and Mary, that line of enquiry seems to have been overlooked and they were reprieved from the gallows, temporarily at least.

We will never know if either woman would have received the ultimate penalty. Mary died from fever in prison a year later, while Anne Bonny simply disappeared from the records.

Bonny’s farewell to her lover, Calico Jack, the night before his execution, did warrant recording for posterity; On her final visit to the beleaguered sot, Bonny scowled….

Who ever said romance is dead.

Thank you for joining me.

Steve
HOST & CHIEF STORY HUNTER

ATTRIBUTIONS
Anne Bonny: Engraved by Benjamin Cole[2] (1695–1766), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Anne Bonny, Firing Upon the Crew, from the Pirates of the Spanish Main series (N19) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes. Geo. S. Harris and Sons, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

CC0: ​https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/​

(read time: 4 mins.)

On 28 November 1240, Batu Khan, grandson of the great Genghis Khan, surrounded Kyiv and the invasion began. For eight days, Kyivan Rus repelled wave after wave of Mongol attacks. Trebuchets and catapults hurled boulders at the city ramparts. On the eighth day, the city walls were breached and the Mongol hordes poured through.

Now in the fourth year of conflict, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine continue to resist the Putin hordes against all odds.

But the Ukrainians’ steadfast resistance shouldn’t come as a surprise.

The city of Kyiv has faced at least 15 major sieges, battles or sustained military attacks in its 1,500-year history. This makes it one of the hottest contested cities in Europe.

In Tim Marshall’s book, ‘The Power of Geography’, he argues that—regardless of the ambition of any individual Russian dictator to reclaim the former states of the USSR—Ukraine will always be at the mercy of its own geography.

How so?

A prisoner of geography

Firstly, it is sandwiched between the largest country in the world, Russia, and the rest of Europe to the west.

The Northern European Plain runs from the northern regions of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and across much of Poland.

At this point, it gives way to the Eastern European Plain, which covers Ukraine, the Baltic states and Belarus. It then sweeps across Moscow, ending abruptly at the Ural Mountains, which—broadly speaking—mark a dividing line between Europe and Asia.

In other words, it’s low-lying land all the way.

With no continuous mountain ranges and limited natural defences, geographically speaking, Ukraine serves as a buffer zone between Russia and the West.

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In addition, Russia has limited warm-water ports, vital for unrestricted sea trade. Sevastopol, on the southwest tip of the Crimean Peninsula and currently under occupation, is a military port and home to Putin’s Black Sea Fleet. By contrast, the Black Sea port of Odesa, hotly sought by Russia, has traditionally handled 65% of Ukraine’s sea-borne imports and exports.

Finally, Marshall highlights that Ukraine’s grain exports account for 10-15% of global corn supplies and 8-10% of global wheat supplies, not to mention its abundance of precious metals.

According to Marshall, Ukraine is a ‘prisoner of geography’.

Batu Khan

Perhaps the most significant of the 15 or more attacks on Kyiv was carried out by Batu Khan, grandson of the great Genghis Khan, founder of the mighty Mongol Empire in 1206.

By the time Batu had reached his twenties, the Mongol Empire had conquered most of Central Asia and Northern China. Genghis Khan’s real genius wasn’t just conquest, it was convincing Mongolia’s fractious nomadic tribes to act as one terrifying force.

The Mongol Empire also excelled at ‘practical imperialism’—allowing communities to follow their own traditions while subjugated to the Empire. It was a sort of Mongol co-operative.

Genghis Khan’s death in 1227 led to the division of the empire among his heirs. Batu’s share was substantial. He wanted more.

In 1236, Batu launched a western campaign that would reshape European history. His target was everything west of the Ural Mountains—a rather ambitious shopping list that encompassed modern-day Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Hungary.

By late 1240, his army had swept through Russia and now stood before Kyiv, still the principal city of Kyivan Rus, though its reputation as a major European commercial and cultural centre had started to fade.

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Out of Curiosity

Kyivan Rus emerged in the late 9th century when Vikings traditionally associated with prince Rurik shifted from raiding Eastern Europe to settling among—and ruling over—the incumbent Slavic tribes.

Kyiv became the capital city and the Kyivan Rus held onto power for the next four centuries.

Then Batu Khan arrived.

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Mongol invasion of Kyivan Rus

On 28 November 1240, Batu’s forces surrounded Kyiv and the invasion began.

For eight days, Kyiv repelled wave after wave of Mongol attacks. Trebuchets and catapults hurled boulders at the city ramparts. The offensive was relentless, day and night.

On the eighth day, the city walls were breached and the Mongol hordes poured through. The carnage that followed was brutal even by medieval standards. The death toll proved catastrophic, with some estimates suggesting that 96% of the 50,000 inhabitants were slaughtered.

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By the time Batu Khan had demolished Kyiv, he had redrawn the political map of Europe. The city would slide from major commercial and cultural centre to provincial backwater.

By contrast, Moscow—formerly a provincial backwater—would rise to become the epicentre of a new Russian state that would stretch from Poland to the edge of the Pacific.

Slavic power was shifting from Kyivan Rus to Moscow.

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(read time: 2 mins.)

Howard Clifford was working quietly at his desk on 7 November 1940. Then a call came in. The Tacoma News Tribune received word of excessive movement in the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Howard was dispatched to take a look. Within two hours, the bridge lay at the bottom of Puget Sound.

The first Tacoma Narrows Bridge opened to traffic on 1 July 1940 after less than two years of construction.

The bridge was a marvel of engineering. She spanned 6,000 feet across Puget Sound, 25 miles southwest of Seattle, Washington State, as the crow flies.

She was the world’s third-longest suspension bridge. Only New York’s George Washington Bridge and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge were longer.

Most importantly for the locals, the new bridge saved a two-hour trip from Tacoma on the east side to the Kitsap Peninsula on the west.

However, what the Tacoma Narrows Bridge saved in time, she made up for in excitement.

In anything but very light winds, the bridge would ripple like a flag in a breeze. Perfectly acceptable behaviour for a flag, rather less so for a bridge. The locals nicknamed her ‘Galloping Gertie’—though given the bridge’s tendency to undulate rather than gallop, ‘Rippling Rita’ might have been more apt.

Anyone who’s pushed a child on a swing understands resonance instinctively. Time your push perfectly, and the swing goes higher and higher with no additional effort. That’s resonance at work.

Every object has a natural resonant frequency, and if you apply force in sync with it, the movement amplifies continuously until something breaks. (Best to stop pushing the swing before that point.)

When an opera singer hits the exact resonant note of a wine glass, it will eventually shatter. When wind blows across a bridge at right angles and matches its natural frequency, the structure will amplify its own movement until it tears itself apart.

And there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

Eighty-five years ago this Friday, on the morning of 7 November 1940, 38 mph winds were pulsing up Puget Sound and across the beam of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

At first, she rippled, then she undulated.

The Tacoma News Tribune received word of excessive movement in the bridge. Howard Clifford was dispatched to take a look. Exhibiting the professional death wish of a true photojournalist, Howard walked onto the bridge, snapping like crazy.

He wasn’t the only one snapping at that moment.

While on the bridge, Clifford tried to rescue Tubby, a beleaguered spaniel, from an abandoned car. Unfortunately, the terrified dog bit him with sufficient enthusiasm to end the rescue effort.

By 9.30 a.m., a lateral twist appeared in the central span of the bridge.

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In this dramatic photo taken by freelance photographer Jim Bashford, you can see Howard staggering off the bridge just in time.

At 11 a.m., the bridge structure failed. Ten minutes later, the central span lay at the bottom of Puget Sound. If you’d like to see the bridge in its final death throes, check it out here.

Luckily, no one perished that day in November 1940 - except for poor old Tubby.

Thank you for joining me.

Steve
HOST & CHIEF STORY HUNTER

ATTRIBUTIONS
Tacoma Narrows Bridge: UW Digital Collections, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons.
Opening day of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge: University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

(read time: 2 mins.)

On 5 November 1605, Guy Fawkes was found lurking in the cellars under the House of Lords, with 36 barrels of gunpowder for company. The Gunpowder Plot had been foiled.

In England, the 5th of November is marked by a display of national eccentricity that would baffle any rational observer. We build the largest bonfire local fire regulations will permit, crown it with the effigy of a medieval chap called Guy Fawkes and set the whole thing alight while unleashing fireworks in all directions.

And it’s all to celebrate one of the greatest failures in English history.

On 5 November 1605, the Gunpowder Plot was foiled. Thirteen would-be regicides plotted to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament.

Their intention was to kill King James I and as many of the Protestant aristocracy as they could. As Catholics, their freedom to worship had been severely curtailed since Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy in 1534.

The conspirators had planted 36 barrels of gunpowder in the cellars under the House of Lords. Due to a tip-off, in the early hours of the morning the authorities searched the cellars. They found an odd-looking chap lurking in the shadows.

The suspicious figure was wearing a cloak, hat, riding boots and spurs. Close to him were the 36 barrels of gunpowder, some slow matches, touchwood and, I assume, an escape plan. He gave his name as John Johnson.

The following day while being tortured, Johnson decided that “I was just browsing” wouldn’t cut it, and revealed himself to be Guy Fawkes. He also revealed the names of his fellow conspirators.

Robert Catesby, Thomas Percy and the Wright brothers died in a shootout three days later on 8 November 1605. Guy Fawkes and seven of the plotters were tried the following January and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

As for Francis Tresham, the last of the conspirators, he died in the Tower of London under mysterious circumstances before he could face trial… but I’ll save that tale for another day.

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Thank you for joining me.

Steve
HOST & CHIEF STORY HUNTER

ATTRIBUTIONS
Gunpowder plotters: British Library, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Guy Fawkes is caught in the cellars of the House of Lords: From An island story, a child’s history of England.

CC0: ​https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/​

(read time: 2 mins.)

Sue Elsegood had been invited to join The Campaign for Accessible Transport (CAT) on one of its protests. Sue and the other seven parked themselves in front of buses along a stretch of Oxford Street. What happened next was hilarious… but within five years, on 8 November 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act became an official Act of Parliament.

“We’re going to hijack a bus on Oxford Street. Do you want to join us?”

That was the proposition to Sue Elsegood, a wheelchair user from Greenwich, South London, in July 1989. But this wasn’t an anti-apartheid protest or a march against the Poll Tax.

The battle had been raging up the road in Westminster for years.

Between 1983 and 1989, six civil rights bills for people with disabilities were introduced to Parliament. Six times Parliament debated whether six million British subjects deserved protection from discrimination. It seemed a reasonable request. But apparently not. Six times Parliament voted ‘no’.

Sue had been invited to join The Campaign for Accessible Transport (CAT) on one of its protests. The demand seemed reasonable enough: people with disabilities should be able to use public transport like everyone else.

Apparently, making this happen required a nudge. Eight CAT members were planning to bring Oxford Street, London’s main shopping artery, to a complete standstill.

The plan was to park their wheelchairs in front of the very buses they were protesting against. Westminster would have to take notice.

Sure enough, amid the mid-morning rush, Sue and the other seven parked themselves in front of buses along a stretch of Oxford Street. Traffic was completely halted, shoppers stopped and stared, taxi drivers fumed.

Sue was now committed. She wouldn’t move until either Parliament voted through an appropriate civil rights bill or she was cured, whichever came first.

As it turns out, neither occurred that day. The police swooped soon after the television cameras arrived, and arrests for obstruction of the highway began.

The situation soon descended into farce.

It proved impossible to bundle the perpetrators into the police vans as they were not wheelchair accessible. The police had to ask Sue if they could borrow her adapted van to ferry the culprits to jail.

At Belgravia Police Station, the on-duty sergeant realised that the cells were not wheelchair-friendly, at which point the CAT 8 were released on bail. To be fair to the police, they’d never had to arrest people in wheelchairs for the crime of trying to catch a bus.

A week later, the CAT 8 received notification that all charges had been dropped, ‘in the public interest’. Or to put it another way, the Horseferry Magistrates Court wasn’t wheelchair accessible.

On 8 November 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act received Royal Assent—it was now an official Act of Parliament.

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(read time: 3 mins.)

Both Jackie Robinson and Rosa Parks stood firm when their human rights were violated on a bus—eleven years apart. Both were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal. Unlike Robinson, Parks received them during her lifetime. With glorious symmetry, Rosa Parks died on the 33rd anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s death.

Jackie Robinson…

…is widely remembered in America as having broken ‘the colour barrier’. Against all odds, he became the first African American to play Major League Baseball and fulfil a stellar career with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
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Robinson’s story perhaps started in 1944 while stationed at Camp Hood, Texas. Like many other young men at the time, he had been drafted into the U.S. Army soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941.
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In Texas, Jim Crow Laws - legal racial segregation - were still in force. One day in July 1944, Robinson boarded a military bus and took his seat near the front. Despite exemption from Jim Crow on military buses, the driver ordered Jackie to move to the back.
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Robinson refused. The bus driver unleashed some unwarranted racial abuse, but Jackie remained calm. His reward… arrest by the military police and court-martial.
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Jackie was acquitted of all charges but the vindication was cold comfort. He had lost confidence in an army that could subject him to such racial injustice.
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With his superiors keen to deflect any criticism of racial prejudice, a compromise was reached. Jackie received an honourable discharge from the army - ‘by reason of physical disqualification’.
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The army’s loss proved to be baseball’s gain. Robinson broke the colour barrier in 1947, was awarded Rookie of the Year and MVP (Most Valuable Player) with the Brooklyn Dodgers. In addition, he won a World Series and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.

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The man who was discharged from the army by reason of physical disqualification had proved himself one of baseball’s finest players, achieved while performing under extreme pressure.
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Jackie Robinson went on to become a high-profile voice in civil rights advocacy. For his contribution, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1984 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2003 by George W. Bush, the two highest civilian honours in the United States.
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Rosa Parks (née Louise McCauley)…

…was born in Tuskegee, Alabama in 1913. As an African American, she was regularly subject to racial discrimination and segregation.
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By the time Jackie Robinson was being arrested at Camp Hood in 1944, Rosa had been married to Raymond Parks for 12 years. During that period she had become involved with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
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Roll forward to December 1955: Rosa Parks was now a seamstress at the Montgomery Fair department store in Montgomery, Alabama.
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One evening, Rosa was heading home after a long day’s work. She boarded her usual bus in Cleveland Avenue and paid the fare. She sat down in the coloured section, one row back from seats reserved for white passengers.
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As the bus took on more passengers, the reserved area reached capacity - white passengers were now standing in the aisle. The driver halted the bus, climbed into the passenger area and shifted the segregation zone sign back one row.
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​Without moving, Rosa was now seated in the white-designated area.
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​The bus driver asked Parks to give up her seat. As with Jackie Robinson eleven years earlier, she refused. The bus remained stationary until the police arrived a short while later to arrest Rosa.

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Parks was released on bail within a few hours. Nonetheless, her employers wasted no time in dismissing her.
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The ensuing Montgomery bus boycott lasted for 381 days. African Americans accounted for 75% of the Montgomery Bus Company’s passenger base. The boycott was a financial disaster.
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With a strong whiff of irony, the bus company itself lobbied the city to reform the very segregation laws its driver had enforced the previous year.
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In November 1956, the US Supreme Court upheld a ruling that segregation on public transport was unconstitutional. The Montgomery bus boycott was over.

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(read time: 3 mins.)

On 14 October 1910, Claude Grahame-White’s Farman III biplane glided down to a perfect landing in the middle of West Executive Avenue, a small roadway between the White House and today’s Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Through a strange historical coincidence, Claude Grahame-White’s landing coincided with Dwight Eisenhower’s 20th birthday.

Claude Grahame-White…

… was born in my county, Hampshire, England in 1879. From an early age, Claude had a fascination with machines and speed.
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He had made his fortune from a motor car business by his early twenties. This was impressive since the first commercial vehicle, the Karl Benz Motorwagen, had only rolled off the production line when he was about six years old.
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Claude turned his attention to flying. He bought his own Bleriot monoplane and competed in aviation competitions across Europe and America. He earned a reputation as one of the most daring pilots of the era.

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In 1910, flying was still very much a novelty. So, one autumn morning, when Grahame-White was in Washington D.C. with time on his hands and an aeroplane at his disposal, he decided to cause a stir. He contacted General Robert S. Oliver at the US War Department to inform him of his plan.
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​Word spread rapidly.
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​By the time Claude had started his aerial display over the heart of Washington D.C., a sizeable crowd had gathered. After 15 minutes, his daring acrobatics would give way to a more remarkable and audacious feat.
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Grahame-White circled the Washington Monument at an altitude of approximately 500 feet, then cut his engine.
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On 14 October 1910, Claude’s Farman III biplane glided down to a perfect landing in the middle of West Executive Avenue, a small roadway between the White House and today’s Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
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Protocols were a little more relaxed in the early 20th century. Rather than face arrest for a breach of White House security, Grahame-White was celebrated by newspapers and applauded by military officers who had been watching.
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After a spot of lunch at the Metropolitan Club, Claude departed as elegantly as he had arrived.

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Through a strange historical coincidence, Claude Grahame-White’s landing alongside the future Eisenhower Executive Office Building coincided with…

…Dwight Eisenhower’s 20th birthday.

Eisenhower was born on 14 October 1890, in Denison, Texas. Of course, there was no connection between the two events at the time—Eisenhower was still unknown and a year away from joining the military.
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His pacifist mother was devastated when he was accepted into West Point Military Academy in 1911.
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Thirty-three years later, Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe. He would orchestrate D-Day on 6 June 1944, the largest amphibious invasion in history. Eleven months later, the Nazis capitulated and the war in Europe was over.
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Eisenhower’s popularity propelled him into the White House, where he served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 to 1961.
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In his 1961 farewell address, Eisenhower recognised America’s pre-eminence as the world’s most powerful nation, but highlighted that America would be judged on ‘how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment’.
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Despite Eisenhower’s military career, his mother’s fundamental opposition to warfare had always remained in his thoughts. Perhaps her influence played a part in that final farewell address when he noted…

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Thank you for joining me.

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Steve
CHIEF STORY HUNTER & WRITER

ATTRIBUTIONS
Claude Grahame-White: Courtesy of Library of Congress, no known restrictions on publication.
Claude Grahame-White, White House: Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Dwight Eisenhower: See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Cover image: Claude Grahame-White; Bain News Service, publisher, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Dwight Eisenhower: Fabian Bachrach, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

(read time: 3 mins.)

By 1863 the billiards industry was in crisis. Balls were made from ivory; The slaughter of elephants didn’t raise an eyebrow but the soaring price of ivory caused by increasing scarcity did. A prize was offered to anyone who could invent an ivory-substitute ball. John Wesley Hyatt was determined to claim the prize. On 10 October 1865, Hyatt received his first patent for a new manufacturing process for billiard balls.

Billiards was established in the 15th century. This is the game played with cues on a 12-foot-by-6-foot table with six pockets and a green felt surface.
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Only three balls are in play and players can accumulate points by potting either of the two other balls, potting their own ball off another (an ‘in-off’) or by touching both other balls with their own in one stroke (the “cannon”).
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​King Louis XI of France received the first known indoor billiard table in 1469. Mary Queen of Scots complained to the Archbishop of Canterbury just before her execution in 1587 that her captors had taken away her billiard table. After her execution, she was apparently wrapped in the green cloth from the same beloved table.

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Billiards.. a game in crisis

Although initially a game for nobles, billiards’ popularity broadened over the centuries.
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However, by 1863 the billiards industry was in crisis. Balls were made from ivory; elephants were being culled at an unprecedented rate for their ivory tusks. The slaughter of elephants didn’t raise an eyebrow but the soaring price of ivory caused by increasing scarcity did.
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The New York billiard manufacturer Phelan & Colander offered a prize to anyone who could invent an ivory-substitute ball.
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​John Wesley Hyatt, a New York-born printer, was in his late twenties when he heard news of the $10,000 prize on offer. He was determined to claim the prize.
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And so began Hyatt’s descent into obsession. Night after night he lived in his laboratory. He mixed compounds with the fervour of a medieval alchemist. He experimented with anything that might send a billiard ball spinning across green felt in the same manner as an elephant’s tusk.

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Wyatt’s patent

On 10 October 1865, John Wesley Hyatt received his first patent for a new manufacturing process for billiard balls. Hyatt’s billiard ball used a composition of shellac (the resin from a lac insect) dissolved in alcohol and mixed with ivory dust.
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The new product had significantly reduced the quantity of ivory needed, but not removed it altogether. It wouldn’t be until around 1870-71 that Hyatt’s new company, the ‘Hyatt Manufacturing Company’ created a billiard ball without any traces of ivory.
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Hyatt had dissolved nitrocellulose with camphor under heat and pressure. No ivory needed. The resulting hard, mouldable substance could be shaped into perfect spheres.
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However, Hyatt admitted to a problem with his cellulite balls. He recalled...

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This might be little unsettling for gentlemen relaxing around a billiard table. Hyatt further recalled that he had received a letter from a concerned billiard saloon operator in Colorado…

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The contribution of Hyatt’s patent for ‘celluloid’ would reach far beyond the genteel world of billiards. He had developed the world’s first commercially successful synthetic plastic.
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His manufacturing process would extend to the production of piano keys, denture plates, detachable shirt collars and cuffs and would eventually provide the foundation for modern photographic film.
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It is not clear if John Wesley Hyatt ever received his $10,000 prize. I don’t suppose the then-wealthy, successful businessman cared.

Thank you for joining me.

Steve
CHIEF STORY HUNTER & WRITER

ATTRIBUTIONS
‘Indifference’: Daniel Thomas Egerton, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
James Wesley Hyatt: See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

CC0: ​https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/​

(read time: 2 mins.)

​Andrei Sakharov watched with horror as the nuclear arms race built momentum. Mutually assured destruction was now a reality. He called for peace, for an end to the arms race and greater respect for human rights. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on 9 October 1975.

Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov…

…was born in Moscow in May 1921. This was the period when the Bolshevik Revolution was taking hold and the Russian Empire’s citizens were coming to terms with a new reality.
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Sakharov was a proud citizen. He worked hard throughout his education while Stalin was tightening his grip on the expanding USSR. In 1942, Andrei graduated with honours in Physics from Moscow State University and was recruited to support development of the hydrogen bomb.
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As a Soviet patriot, Andrei believed that America’s monopoly on nuclear weapons should be broken. In 1953, the Soviets test-launched their first hydrogen bomb. The Soviets rewarded Sacharov with election to the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
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He was only 32 years old.
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​Then everything changed.

Read more

(read time: 5 mins.)

The limited ventilation and perpetual occupation in Winston Churchill’s War Rooms left a distinctive staleness in the air, compounded by the constant fog of cigarette and cigar smoke. This wasn’t Givenchy, but it was the authentic aroma of democracy under threat.

If you take a stroll along the eastern edge of St James’s Park, London, you’ll find yourself in the very heart of British power: Horseguards Parade where ceremonial troops still perform their precisely choreographed duties, the unassuming rear entrance to No. 10 Downing Street, and the Treasury building—that imposing structure where the nation’s accountants wage their own particular brand of warfare.

But you might completely miss perhaps the most iconic historical site of them all, Churchill’s War Rooms, the heartbeat of the British Empire during World War II.

​The decision to build Churchill’s War Rooms (originally known as the Cabinet War Rooms) wasn’t born from paranoia, but from a rather sobering assessment of Britain’s vulnerability.

By 1938, the Spanish Civil War had provided a chilling preview of what modern aerial bombardment could achieve. In April 1937, Hitler’s Condor Legion had reduced the Basque town of Guernica to rubble in just three hours—a devastating dress rehearsal that demonstrated exactly what aerial bombardment could do to an undefended civilian population…

…and Hitler’s Luftwaffe was growing stronger by the month. The British government faced an uncomfortable truth: if war came—and it seemed increasingly likely it would—London would be a prime target. The heart of British command needed protection, but not the ostentatious bunker-building that would signal panic.

Instead, they opted for something more discreet: converting the basement of the Treasury building, within 150 metres of the back door to No. 10 Downing Street, residence of the British Prime Minister.

​The Cabinet War Rooms would be the central command centre of the British war effort for the entirety of the war.

Churchill’s War Rooms take shape

Construction in the basement of today’s HM Treasury building began in 1938. However, the original structure wasn’t designed as an underground fortress. It was only when The Blitz started raining incendiary bombs and parachute mines on London that the authorities realised the timber structure wasn’t fit for purpose.

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In December 1940, a reinforced concrete slab up to three metres thick, supported by steel girders, was installed above the War Rooms. The work had to be carried out in total secrecy - no sense signalling to the enemy what lay beneath.

​Anything larger than a 500-pound bomb would have still torn through the concrete and silenced the heartbeat of British intelligence, so secrecy remained the best defence.

Churchill’s War Rooms are buzzing

​For 2,181 consecutive days and nights, electric light bulbs illuminated the dark, windowless rooms and corridors. Reminiscent of life in the Arctic Circle in winter, this was a virtual twilight world where darkness never fell.

​Throughout those six years, the War Rooms hummed with activity around the clock. At any one time, 500 people created an ’untidy, clattering bustle’. Generals, admirals, typists, cooks, switchboard operators and cleaners scurried along the corridors like mice in a maze.

​Limited ventilation and perpetually occupied rooms left a distinctive staleness in the air, compounded by the constant fog of cigarette and cigar smoke. This wasn’t Givenchy, but it was the authentic aroma of democracy under threat.

In the Dock

​Below the War Rooms in the sub-basement was The Dock; the spartan living quarters where staff could sleep overnight rather than risk the journey home through the gauntlet of inevitable air raids.

​In The Dock, ceilings were oppressively low, ventilation was even worse than the floor above and the perfume of chemical toilets permeated the confined space.

​Winston Churchill had provisioned a bedroom in the War Rooms. Against advice, he seldom slept there, preferring the sanctuary of his own bedroom at Downing Street.

The Map Room

​However, Churchill did spent many hours underground in the War Rooms, mainly in the Map Room. If the War Rooms as a whole represented the nervous system of British Intelligence, then the Map Room was its brain.

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Maps covered every wall, studded with coloured pins marking ship convoys and the positions of Allied and enemy forces. Coloured string traced supply routes and ship movements across the oceans.

​Staff worked in shifts to keep the pins and string up to date. As Churchill paced up and down the room - cigar firmly clenched between his teeth, wearing silk pyjamas, a dressing gown or his famously unstylish one-piece jumpsuit - the operators tracked the ebbs and flows of the greatest conflict in history.

​The failed British Expeditionary Force in the Battle of France, the subsequent evacuation at Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the menace of the U-boats in the Atlantic, the Battle of Stalingrad and, of course, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were all vicariously experienced through the diligent operators as they reshuffled the pins and string on the maps in response to updates from allied intelligence networks across the globe.
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Out of Curiosity

One of the more whimsical, thoroughly British touches in the War Rooms is the weather sign that kept staff informed about conditions above ground - essential intelligence for people who might not see daylight for days.
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The common meteorological updates included ‘Fine & Warm’, ‘Rain’, ’Snow’ or ‘Frosty’.
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During air raids, the sign was set to ‘Windy’.

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Closing down

Almost as soon as the Japanese surrendered after the controversial bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Churchill’s War Rooms staff were immediately stood down.
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On 16 August 1945, the lights to the Cabinet War Rooms were switched off. Wing Commander John Seymour Heagerty, RAF, the last Camp Commandant, took one final walk through the building, pausing at each room to turn off each bank of lights.
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There was no ceremony, no special witnesses. Nonetheless, this was a profound moment when, symbolically, the British war machine stopped thinking, the moment when peace descended on the world.
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​For the first time in six years, the Cabinet War Rooms were once again in darkness.

The Churchill War Rooms reborn

​​The British nerve centre throughout the war remained untouched for nearly four decades. In fact, even in the early 1980s, most people were unaware it even existed.
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In 1982, the Imperial War Museum (I.W.R.) was appointed to take over the site from the Department of the Environment. Then, in 1984, I.W.R. opened Churchill’s War Rooms to the public; a time capsule unsealed, a snapshot of the day it was abandoned some forty years earlier. What a privilege that must have been for the museum staff!
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Today Churchill’s War Rooms are still open for business. This is one of my favourite historical sites to visit in London.
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Thankfully, the distinctive wartime aromas have long since dissipated, but the Map Room, cramped offices, spartan bedrooms and once-frantic corridors remain frozen in time—a perfectly preserved window into Britain’s darkest and finest hour.
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Amusingly, Wing Commander Heagerty’s rationed sugar cubes were found in his desk drawer, presumably left behind in the hurried departure. These preserved, crystalline treasures are now on display in the Map Room.
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I think the most striking experience of the visit comes in the first moment. Having descended into the basement, you immediately find yourself in the iconic War Cabinet Room, where Churchill once declared...

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​It is a breathtaking scene, a true historical moment in time. The clocks are poignantly set to 4:58, signifying two minutes before the first ever war meeting in the room on 15 October 1940.
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Everything else is laid out exactly as it was left on 16 August 1945.

Thank you for joining me.

Steve
HOST & CHIEF STORY HUNTER

ATTRIBUTIONS
Cabinet War Rooms: Frankemann, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Map Room: Kaihsu Taiderivative work: SilkTork, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Treasury Building: HM Treasury, Open Government Licence v3.0.
Churchill’s War Rooms (feature image): CrisNYCa, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

CC BY 4.0: ​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 ​
CC BY-SA 3.0: ​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 ​
CC BY-SA 2.0: ​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0​
CC BY-ND 4.0: ​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

(read time: 4 mins.)

Harold Habgood served in the RAF during World War II. ​In July 1944, Habgood’s Lancaster was shot down over eastern France. Within two days, 31 July 1944, Habgood was executed by the Gestapo.

If you ever find yourself near Trafalgar Square in London with a spare hour or so, take a stroll along The Strand. Within a few minutes, you will stumble into St Clement Danes Church.

The church is best known to many English children from the nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons, which refers to the bells of a number of churches within proximity to the City of London.

The Church has been designated as the Central Church of the RAF since its most recent restoration in 1958. It was actually reconsecrated in the October, within one month of former RAF Air Chief Marshal Sir Patrick Hine and his 111 Squadron colleagues completing the world record 22-plane loop at Farnborough (Check out our Batting the Breeze Original Stories podcast episode Twenty-two Black Arrows).

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St Clement Danes Church has a rich history that goes back much further than 1958. The “Danes” element in the name refers to the Danish settlers who built the original church on the site in the 9th century. One of the most notable figures buried there is the Danish King of England and son of Cnut, Harold I (Harefoot). ​

Harold Habgood

But it was another Harold that caught my attention when I last visited. ​ ​​

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I walked into the church past the imposing figures of Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris and Air Chief Marshal Lord Hugh Dowding. I turned towards a glass cabinet on the left. In the cabinet, I noticed a small, tarnished silver bracelet lying on the central shelf among a host of other RAF-related memorabilia. ​

The bracelet belonged to Harold Habgood, who served in the RAF during World War II. He was a member of an Avro Lancaster Bomber crew. His role was bomb-aimer, or bombardier, responsible for identifying targets and releasing bombs at critical moments.

​In July 1944, Habgood’s Lancaster was shot down over eastern France. Habgood and three crew members parachuted to safety. He hid in a barn in the village of Ottrot, some 15 miles from Strasbourg. ​

Unfortunately for Habgood, he was spotted by a local woman who reported his location to the Gestapo. The Gestapo transported him six miles up the road to Natzweiler-Struthof, the only concentration camp built by the Nazis on French soil.

Habgood execution

Within two days, on 31 July 1944, Habgood was executed. It was a gross violation of the Geneva Convention and one for which the perpetrators paid with their own lives in 1946.

Harold was 21 years old.

​It was a sorry story among so many sorry stories from World War II. But Harold’s story has an uplifting and unlikely postscript. ​

In 2018, a young woman named Anna Bernard was doing routine maintenance in the ash pit at the preserved Natzweiler-Struthof camp when something small caught her eye in the soil. A silver bracelet—a gourmette—engraved with RAF wings, a name and a service number. Silver being stubbornly resistant to the passage of time, it had survived decades underground in remarkable condition.

The bracelet belonged to Harold Habgood. Memorial staff tracked down his nephew Paul and niece Marilyn. Identification was clinched with a 1943 letter in which Harold had described receiving exactly such a bracelet, engraved just so, sent by relatives in Canada who presumably had no idea it would one day be doing archaeological duty in Alsatian soil.

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(read time: 2 mins.)

Colonel Sir Ernest Edward “Weary” Dunlop, senior medical officer in the Australian Army Medical Corps, born on this day, was captured by the Japanese and sent to the infamous Burma-Thailand Railway in 1942.

There’s little more exciting than uncovering the life of a true hero, and one that has remained seemingly unknown and uncelebrated—at least in my neck of the woods in the UK. I am sure down under my Australian friends would recoil that I had never heard of this particular true Australian hero…

Weary Dunlop

Colonel Sir Ernest Edward “Weary” Dunlop was born 12 July 1907 in Wangaratta, Victoria, Australia. Although Victoria was—and still is—primarily an Aussie Rules Football state, Weary became the first Victorian to play for the Wallabies (the Australian rugby union team) in 1932 at the Sydney Cricket Ground, having only started playing the code a year earlier.

But it was in the arena of war that Dunlop left an indelible impression on the Australian psyche. As a senior medical officer in the Australian Army Medical Corps in 1942, he was captured by the Japanese and sent to the infamous Burma-Thailand Railway.

Conditions for prisoners on the ‘Death Railway’ were notoriously brutal. Prisoners of War (POWs) endured beatings, torture, malnutrition and disease. Over 2,500 Australians perished on the railway between 1942-1945, a number that may have been much higher without the presence of Weary Dunlop.

As well as meticulously tending to his sick and dying men throughout, he would fearlessly stand up to his Japanese captors, endangering his own life to negotiate better rations and conditions for his men. It was reported that on one occasion, he refused an opportunity to escape in favour of remaining with his patients. His presence provided a much-needed morale boost to the men in captivity with him.

In later life, in addition to continuing a career as a surgeon, Weary fought endlessly for the welfare and rights of former POWs. He also revisited the Burma-Thailand Railway on several occasions to help promote reconciliation with Japan after the war. ​ ​

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Weary was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1947 and knighted in 1969, but his credentials as an Australian hero were formalised in 1976 when he was named Australian of the Year. ​

Sir Ernest Edward Dunlop died in 1993 and received a full State funeral at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne on what would have been his 86th birthday, 12 July 1993. ​

He is remembered down under today through statues in Canberra and Victoria and through the Sir Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop Medical Research Foundation, amongst others.

From now on, each year I shall toast this true Australian hero.

Thank you for joining me.

Steve
HOST & CHIEF STORY HUNTER

ATTRIBUTIONS
Weary Dunlop 1945: http://hellfire-pass.commemoration.gov.au/surviving-the-camps/weary-dunlop.php, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Weary Dunlop statue: Rexness, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Cover image: Lieutenant-Colonel E.E. ‘Weary’ Dunlop and Lieutenant-Colonel Albert Coates at Nakhon Pathom hospital camp, Thailand, 1945.

CC BY 4.0: ​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 ​
CC BY-SA 2.0: ​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0​
CC BY-ND 4.0: ​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

(read time: 2 mins.)

Armin Faber was an Oberleutnant in the German Luftwaffe and a Focke-Wulf pilot. He had clocked up many hundreds of hours flying as an instructor before his posting to Morlaix in Brittany.

​In Brittany, Armin Faber was flying the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, regarded then as one of the finest fighter planes in the War. The Luftwaffe pilots had faith in the Focke-Wulf; it handled well—particularly at low altitudes—and was heavily armed. As such, it proved a match for the Spitfire V in low-altitude confrontations. ​

There were many other technical and performance details of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 about which the Germans were keen to keep schtum (before you lambast me for drifting into slang, ‘schtum’ is derived from the German word ’stumm’ meaning mute or silent so I reckon that’s OK?).

Nations would go to great lengths to keep the latest design features of their aircraft secret from their enemies, so little was known about the Focke-Wulf Fw 190. But, with a little help from Oberleutnant Armin Faber, that was about to change. ​

Where the Focke-Wulf am I?

At some point on 23 June 1942, Faber’s unit was scrambled to confront six Boston bombers and their escorts returning over the English Channel from a sortie in Germany. The dogfight was intense, and Faber was separated from his squadron during one particular encounter with a Spitfire.

The duel continued across Exeter in Devon until, eventually, Faber shot down the dogged Spitfire. ​

Exhausted and running low on fuel, Armin urgently needed a landing point. He looked down at the English Channel, aimed for the French coast and safely landed at the first available airstrip. ​

There was, however, one problem. Faber had mistaken the Bristol Channel for the English Channel so instead of landing at a German-occupied airstrip on the north coast of France, he had inadvertently put down at RAF Pembrey in South Wales. He climbed out of his cockpit, ready for his warm welcome, only to be confronted by the duty pilot, Sergeant Jeffreys, armed only with a flare gun. ​

Faber’s error provided the RAF with a fully intact Focke-Wulf Fw 190, allowing them unprecedented access to the machine. This directly led to changes in British fighter plane design that were pivotal in the success of the D-Day landings.

​As a footnote, Armin Faber visited his Focke-Wulf Fw 190 at the Shoreham Aircraft Museum in Kent in 1991, where he also saw the remains of the Spitfire he shot down that day.

Thank you for joining me.

Steve
HOST & CHIEF STORY HUNTER

ATTRIBUTIONS
Focke-Wulf: USAAF, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Armin Faber’s Focke-Wulf in UK: RAF, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Southwest England: Nzeemin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

CC BY-SA 3.0: ​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 ​

(read time: 2 mins.)

Why St Peter’s School Remembers Charles Rolls

Back in 1976, I went to St Peter’s School in Bournemouth, spending seven very happy years playing rugby and gaining friends who I’m still in touch with today.

Towards the end of my school years in 1981, the whole school was shuffled out of class one morning, down onto the school playing fields and over into the far corner, where a small memorial had just been constructed. ​It turned out it was there to commemorate the life of Charles Rolls, the ‘Rolls’ in Rolls-Royce. ​

He was an extraordinary man. At the age of 25, he started one of the UK’s first car dealerships. Shortly after, he met Henry Royce, a car builder. Rolls-Royce was soon born, destined to become the producer of the world’s most sought-after luxury car and an esteemed manufacturer of aero engines. ​

But Rolls’ real passion was aviation.

On 2 June 1910, he became the first person to make a nonstop double crossing of the English Channel by plane, which received much acclaim. ​

So, why were we standing in the corner of the school playing fields that day, marking his life with a memorial and a few well-chosen words?

Well, Rolls’ passion for aviation unfortunately proved to be his ultimate downfall. After more than 200 flights and at the age of 35, only a month after his extraordinary double channel-crossing, he was killed when his plane crashed during a routine air display, 12 July 1910. ​

And the spot where Charles Rolls crashed and died that day—the corner of the St. Peter’s School playing fields where we were standing to remember a wonderful, if not brief, life.

Thank you for joining me.

Steve
HOST & CHIEF STORY HUNTER

ATTRIBUTIONS
Memorial stone: AndyScott, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Charles Rolls: http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/art-13853, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

CC BY-ND 4.0: ​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

(Read time: 3 mins.)

Chris Moon (MBE) was working for the Halo Trust, clearing landmines in Cambodia. On 10 June 1993, he was taken prisoner by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, the most feared and brutal regime in the country’s history.

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Among Chris’s extraordinary life experiences, he can lay claim to be the only Westerner to survive imprisonment by the Khmer Rouge.

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Chris managed to keep his emotions in check, using his early-life farming experiences, army training, and plenty of guile to take control of a situation stacked heavily against him and his team.

Forced to drive through hostile territory, Chris faced an impossible choice at a raging river: attempt the crossing and risk being washed away, or refuse and be shot. His solution involved a heavy Russian truck, a Land Rover winch and nerves considerably steadier than those of his terrified driver.

After trekking through the stifling, malaria-infested Cambodian forest for two days, the outlook was not good; the Khmer Rouge commander was planning to shoot the prisoners and burn the vehicles. But then... Chris encountered Mr Clever…

Meeting the much-feared General Kao Pong (a.k.a. Mr Clever) was the unlikely breakthrough that saved Chris’s life. The general had stayed at his post the day Chris and his team had been brought to the camp because—and you really can’t make this up—a voice in the general’s head told him something important would happen.

Chris convinced Mr Clever of his neutrality

Mr Clever’s assessment was disarmingly simple: “You’re the first one who isn’t afraid of me, so I know you’re a good person like me.“

Risking his own life and defying Pol Pot’s orders, Mr Clever released Chris and his team back into the jungle. There were still many dangers ahead, but they all survived to tell the tale.

I was fortunate enough to talk with Chris about his terrifying experience in Cambodia in the Batting the Breeze—Original Stories podcast episode The Khmer Rouge, Mr Clever and Me. Chris talked me through the four days in detail in his own self-deprecating style. He also talked about the twist in the story—today, General Kao Pong and Chris are good friends! Listen in to the podcast to find out how that unlikely partnership materialised.

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Halo Trust, Mozambique

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FOOTNOTE
Two years later, Chris was engaged in mine clearance in Mozambique when he stood on one of the mines in the process of being cleared. He lost an arm and a leg. Chris treated himself on the spot and managed to crawl to find help.

The surgeon who operated on Chris in South Africa said he had never known anyone survive with so little blood; he couldn’t understand how he survived.

Check out Chris’s short—and typically self-deprecating—account of surviving the land mine below...

Play the video.

Thank you for joining me.

Steve
HOST & CHIEF STORY HUNTER

​

ATTRIBUTIONS
Images courtesy of Chris Moon.

(read time: 2 mins.)

The Australian and New Zealand Air Corps (ANZAC) landed at Gallipoli during the First World War on 25 April 1915. Their task was to take control of the Dardanelles (or ‘Strait of Gallipoli’), a strategically important waterway to the Black Sea from the Mediterranean.

Winston Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, was largely responsible for instigating the Gallipoli campaign against the Turks. Approximately 60,000 Allied troops—including 11,500 ANZACs—and 60,000 Turks were killed, and the campaign ended in dismal failure for the Allies.

The bravery and loyalty shown by the ANZACs remain a symbol of Australian and New Zealand pride and national identity to this day.

Churchill’s enthusiasm for the plan bordered on obsession. He believed a bold strike through the Dardanelles would knock Turkey out of the war, open a supply route to Russia, and possibly bring the entire conflict to a swifter end.

On paper, it looked brilliant. In practice, it became one of history’s most brutal lessons.

Winston Churchill never quite shook the burden of Gallipoli. For years afterwards, political opponents used it as a stick to beat him with. He carried the weight of Allied deaths like a particularly heavy overcoat he couldn’t remove. However, he defended the strategy until his dying day, arguing that the concept was sound but the execution was bungled by others.

Thank you for joining me. Have a great week!

Steve
HOST & CHIEF STORY HUNTER

ATTRIBUTIONS
ANZAC troops land at Gallipoli: Published by Brookes Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Anzacs: State Library of New South Wales collection, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons.

(Read time: 3 mins.)

Alan Turing’s masterpiece, The Bombe, was installed at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire on 18 March 1940 and changed the course of World War II. It broke the Enigma code, but it couldn’t do it alone. It needed tacit knowledge.

A visit to Bletchley Park got me thinking about the concept of ‘tacit knowledge’. Bletchley Park is the home of the Bombe, the machine which helped to decipher encrypted messages from the German Enigma machines throughout World War II, made famous by the film The Imitation Game featuring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. ​

The Bombe

The Bombe was primarily Alan Turing’s brainchild, but let’s not forget that the actual Enigma code was originally cracked by three Polish mathematicians—Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki, and Henryk Zygalski. I was pleased to see the fitting memorial at Bletchley Park to their work, which significantly shortened the length of WWII and saved countless lives. ​

The Bombe is the main attraction at Bletchley Park. It’s a large, rudimentary, part-electrical, part-mechanical device designed to reveal the settings for the Enigma machine on any given day, to enable the decoding of all Enigma-encrypted messages.

The following day, the Germans would change the settings and the Bombe had to start all over again. (In fact, by the end of the war, there were over 200 Bombes in the UK and more than 100 Bombes in the USA.) ​

The point is that time was of the essence. The longer the Bombe took to work out the Enigma settings on any given day, the more likely important decrypted information would be lost.

Turing realised that processing time could be shortened if humans made a few guesses at the start of the day about some of those settings. This time saved could be significant. A ‘crib‘—a potential word or phrase—was input to the Bombe to give it a head start.

But here’s where tacit knowledge earned its keep: selecting the right crib wasn’t a matter of pure logic or systematic process. It required hunches born from experience, pattern recognition that couldn’t be written down and that peculiar human knack for sensing what felt right.

The codebreakers weren’t just following a formula—they were drawing on something the Bombe could never possess, no matter how many rotors it spun. Once the Bombe had completed its task, the information gathered was then passed over to more humans, the crypto-analysts, who used intuition and experience to complete the deciphering. ​

So, back to tacit knowledge…

tacit adjective
[tas-it]
‘implied or indicated but not actually expressed’ ​

The word ‘tacit‘ comes from the Latin ’tacitus’, which means ‘to be silent’.

​It was fascinating to learn how humans worked alongside the grunting processing power of a rudimentary computer to produce a result greater than the sum of their individual efforts. Those humans, admittedly very bright, relied on their own personal store of experiences, learnings, interactions and observations to win each day.

In other words, they relied on their tacit knowledge. ​

Tacit knowledge is effectively our personal intellectual blueprint. It is unique to each of us and difficult to pass on. That’s why smart organisations (like MI6 at Bletchley Park) employ people with wide-ranging backgrounds to maximise the benefits of that tacit knowledge.

It’s also the reason we parents nag our children to read ‘behind a subject’, not because it will help them pass a particular exam, but because it will top up their reservoir of tacit knowledge for the future. ​

Polymath Michael Polanyi, in the 1950s and 1960s, realised that humans “believe more than we can know” and “know more than we can say”. He contemplated the idea of tacit knowledge as a basis for problem-solving, invention, leadership and decision-making. ​

I think this is why we still have a long way to go before AI machines topple humans. As it is hard to pass on tacit knowledge from humans to humans, so it is also hard (so far!) to pass on tacit knowledge from humans to machines. ​

So many thoughts came home with me from that day at Bletchley Park, but let me spotlight two in particular: ​

Firstly, it highlighted how important storytelling has been throughout the generations as an effective attempt to short-cut the process of acquiring tacit knowledge, by sharing rich, colourful and timeless stories. ​

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