Archive for November, 2007
British bloggers blossom
November 9th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
The very earliest days of blogging were a decade ago. I’ve been blogging for almost five years now and usually blog every day. A full-page feature in today’s “Guardian” news paper claims that, of Britain’s 26 million Internet users, 15% run a blog and that almost one in five of them blog at least once […]
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Forgotten World (110): St Martin
November 9th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Saint Martin is a small tropical island in the north-east Caribbean, approximately 300 km south-east of Puerto Rico. The 87 square km island is divided roughly in half between France and the Netherlands and it is the smallest inhabited sea island divided between two nations. The northern French half is a overseas collectivity of France.The […]
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
Forgotten World (109): Kaliningrad
November 8th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Kaliningrad by the Baltic Sea is one of the strangest territories in Europe. The region was part of Germany until annexation by the USSR following World War II when it saw bitter fighting and suffered rampant destruction. The German population was expelled or fled after the war ended. Following the break-up of the Soviet Union […]
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Man cold
November 7th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Lots of people seem to have colds and flu at the moment (not me yet, thank goodness), so I thought this video clip from the television serious “Manstokewoman” might amuse:
Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments (0)
Forgotten World (108): Djibouti
November 7th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Djibouti is a small (population 721,000) African country by the Gulf of Aden that is surrounded by Eritrea to the north, Ethiopia to the west and Somalia to the south. It was a French colony until 1977 and France still has thousands of troops stationed there. The country has two main ethnic groups: the Issa […]
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A world of wheels
November 6th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
The London Eye – which stands at 135 metres – is now an iconic feature of the capital’s skyline and I’ve been on it several times. On a recent visit to Manchester, I found that this city now has a Wheel of Manchester too, rising 60 metres. For a time, there was a wheel in […]
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Forgotten World (107): Laos
November 6th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Laos was originally known as Lan Xang (which means the Kingdom of a Million Elephants) when it was founded by the legendary Fa Ngum. It gained its independence from France in 1954, but became embroiled in the Vietnam war since the Ho Chi Minh trail ran through it. By the end of the Vietnam war, […]
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How did Guy Fawkes die?
November 5th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
In Britain, this evening is celebrated as Bonfire Night – a commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot, the failed attempt by the Catholic Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators to blow up the Protestant Parliament in 1605. But how exactly did Fawkes die? After being found guilty, the conspirators were taken to Old Palace Yard in Westminster […]
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Forgotten World (106): Mozambique
November 5th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
On 21 occasions now, I’ve had a week-long feature devoted to parts of the world that tend to be under-reported or even forgotten. It’s some time since I did so, but this week I am going to run another series of postings on this theme. Mozambique is a country in South-East Africa with almost 20M […]
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The Joint Strike Fighter programme
November 4th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Recently I found myself at London’s Heathrow airport having a light lunch before boarding an aircraft for Inverness. In a busy cafe, I sat at a table where someone was already eating and got talking to him. Martin Parson turned out to be a freelance aeronautical engineer working in Preston on something called the Joint […]
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