140 spm
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- It was just about a month after that when he brought the old man up to London with him. They had some stuff to put out at Smith’s Dock, on the other side of the river, before they came to us, and though they were only there four or five days, it was long enough for that old man to get into trouble. The skipper told me about it ten minutes after they were made snug in the inner berth. He walked up and down like a man with a raging toothache, and after following him up and down the dock till I was tired out, I discovered that he was sneaking boxes aboard.
- It had been a long time since Doctor Harker of the Institute of Physics at Geneva had created the first anti-hydrogen. His rookie team of German, Italian and Swiss scientists had no way of catching and storing that first anti-matter. Only several decades later did Delaney manage to trap a few trillion particles in a magnetic bottle at the Academy of Sciences. Now, a century and a half later, David Eden looked down upon the most powerful protonic engine the earth had ever seen.
- The rescuers took precarious step after precarious step as they clambered down the treacherous cliff. The two of them were roped together, making their way by torchlight. The wailing, icy wind drew their breath and they shivered in the eerie moonlight. They gingerly approached the overhang, knowing that they would have only one chance. This was the moment. Now was the time to draw on all their years of training and to get it right, first time. But as they gaped over the precipitous protrusion, their confidence turned to gut-wrenching dismay. The party was nowhere in sight.
- Karen had a sidekick who went by the name of Jo – presumably short for Josephine or Joanne, or something similar. Perhaps she was actually a Joe? Whatever, she didn’t look anything like a man, but she had nowhere near the suppleness of body and shapely form that Karen possessed. She was the accompanist and she was employed to pamper to Karen’s every whim, as she dictated a tempo and style suitable to whatever excruciating dance routine she wickedly chose to force us through. But Jo always kept up, always on time.
- The Middle Ages was a period in European history that was reportedly dormant and fallow. Few achievements and little of artistic note are supposed to have come from these dark times, the so-called Dark Ages. However, scholars now generally believe that things were not quite as unproductive as this myth suggests. The work of monks in preserving the works of great Latin writers was an achievement in itself. Indeed, the current legal system of modern Europe was developed from medieval civil and ecclesiastic law.
- Dave the Hobbit was building a bicycle, a ten-speed racer. Quite a nice machine, very lightweight and slick. All the Johnsons have an aptitude for things mechanical and, consequently, Dave had made a good job of finishing the bike except for one thing – the brakes. Not that he couldn’t have finished them but that he didn’t have any to finish the bike with. He’d salvaged the parts from other cycles but was unable to obtain a good set of brakes second-hand and, so he was saving up to buy a new set. Anyway, Kevin and I decided to ride it.
- Of course, the evening dances were the highlights of the Convention when we young peacocks would preen ourselves to flirt before the hens. During such conventions we would all sleep in the Church itself. The Sunderland building was enormous and had a dozen separate rooms in which we could be accommodated. All we had to do was arm ourselves with the necessary sleeping bags and pillows and we were set to make a night of it. Each room took in some six to ten persons chaperoned by an adult leader. As one might expect, they differed in their sense of humor.
- Traditional ‘realistic’ painting was a skill which almost anyone could be taught but, now that very few of us learn it, it can seem like magic. Many people still feel annoyed or disappointed by anything that seems unalike, especially art that is completely abstract – that is, it doesn’t try to copy the appearance of the world around us. Liking classical music, however, does not stop us from enjoying rock and it would be a shame to let admiration for traditional skills make us close our eyes to other visual forms.
- Mark Barnsley knew what to do when the prison barber gave him a haircut he didn’t like. He sued the privately run Doncaster jail in Yorkshire, claiming the haircut made him look like a criminal. Barnsley won one hundred pounds damages and the judge, who heard the case inside the jail, ordered the prison company to pay his costs. Hundreds of bizarre cases like these are crowding courts and industrial tribunals as Whining Britain develops a taste for victim culture and litigation, with the motto: If anything insignificant goes wrong, then sue.
- For that extra special treat during your holiday in North America why not take in an exciting show in Toronto, Vancouver, New York City, Los Angeles or Chicago? Live Event produces world class musical theatre and has brought its Tony Award winning productions to the most prominent stages around the world. Throughout North America, audiences thrill to the superb caliber of live musical theatre for which Live Event is renowned. Why not give yourself a treat and book tickets for your favorite show right away?
- The woman whose childhood love of adventure helped lead to the formation of the Girl Guides has died aged one hundred and two. Doris Alice Jourd, known to her friends as Helen, claimed to have been the world’s first Guide. At the age of twelve, she went on a Sunday School outing with a group of Boy Scouts and was so taken by camping that she asked her mother to found a Scout troop for girls. The pair devised a makeshift uniform of a Scout hat, brown blouse, navy skirt and tie, and their troop – in Gillingham, Kent – was known locally as Helen’s Gang. But within weeks, seventy girls had joined up.
- My earliest recollections of childhood are fragmentary. A wide street with the name Boulevard. An autograph which, even now, invokes an impression of gas lamps hissing to the rustlings of avenue arcades of trees. A big house. Our house. At the time, I supposed we owned that grand habitation, though I have since discovered we were apportioned only one diminutive apartment. I remember a plaything. A toy pedal car. Blue and white bodywork with silver bell. A fully working police vehicle for me to patrol the streets, parks and gardens.
- The term psychoanalysis was coined by Sigmund Freud, an Austrian physician and neurologist. His explanations of the psychological basis of mental illness began with his studies of hysteria. Over many years he refined his ideas and developed therapeutic procedures for helping people suffering from neuroses and psychoses. Freud is credited with demonstrating the existence of the unconscious mind. However, he is best known for his work on dream analysis in The Interpretation of Dreams.
- Many countries have undergone an industrial revolution. In Britain, this occurred towards the end of the eighteenth century. It involved a shift from the existing agricultural economy, where the emphasis was on the production of basic products such as foodstuffs, towards the production of new manufactured goods. Production became much more mechanized and goods were produced on a vastly greater scale than before. The biggest social change involved the movement of large numbers of people from the countryside into the growing towns.
- Who would have thought that not having a male child could cause so much disruption? Well, you should speak to Catherine of Aragon. Because she had not delivered a male for Henry, he decided to divorce her. Oh, by the way, Henry was the king of England. He applied to the Pope for a divorce. The Pope refused and so Henry married Anne Boleyn. He then got his puppet the archbishop of Canterbury to declare that he was actually divorced from Catherine. He also decided that he’d had enough of Rome and so he started his own church, the Church of England.
- Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. Or so I thought.
- The night-watchman, who had left his seat on the jetty to answer the gate-bell, came back with disgust written on a countenance only too well designed to express it. “If she’s been up here once in the last week to know whether the Silvia is up, she’s been four or five times,” he growled. “He’s forty-seven if he’s a day; his left leg is shorter than his right, and he talks very quickly. When she’s with him you’d think that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth; but the way she talked to me just now you’d think I was paid a fortune to wait on her. I asked her what she thought she was doing.
- She’s not the first I’ve had words with, not by a long way. They are all the same. They all start in a nice, kind, soapy sort of way, and, as soon as they don’t get what they want, they fly into a temper and ask me who I think I am. I told one woman once not to be silly, and I shall never forget it as long as I live – never. For all I know, she’s wearing a bit of my hair in a locket to this day, and very likely boasting that I gave it to her. Talking of her reminds me of another woman. She was Lady Pinner. She used to travel up to Hull.
