News that Lieutenant John Chard’s original report to Queen Victoria concerning the engagement between 139 South Wales Borderers and a force estimated to be around 3,000 Zulus at Rorke’s Drift on the 22nd and 23rd of January 1879 is coming up for auction at Bonham’s in London.
Once, while at the Royal Spanish Academy in Rome, I tried to give lectures, but one woman constantly blinded me with a camera flash, which prevented me from concentrating on my notes. I said that while I was working, they should stop working, because of the division of labour. The woman turned off her camera but clearly felt pained.
This enigmatic incident with sinister undertones took place either in June 1947 or in February 1948. It sounds paradoxical, but it is a fact. Even the time of the occurrence is unknown, although the mysterious case is inextricably linked with the sea and ships.
During World War II, between 1941 and 1945, 78 Allied Arctic convoys brought more than 4 million tons of provisions and munitions to the U.S.S.R. These deliveries played a crucial role in the Soviet war effort. More than 1,400 merchant ships and naval vessels participated in the convoys to the ports of Arkhangelsk and Murmansk in Arctic Russia, which Winston Churchill once described as “the worst journey in the world.”
Stephen Ellison, British Consul General in the Chinese Chongqing municipality, has been hailed as a hero after being filmed jumping into a river and saving a woman from drowning.
On November 14, 1854, during a severe storm off the coast of Balaklava, the 2,700-tonne vessel, HMS Prince did not have time to take shelter. Helpless against the raging storms that frequent the Black Sea, the recently-built vessel was swept on to the rocks and soon afterwards sank beneath the waves.
Exactly 170 years ago, on November 13, 1850, Robert Louis Stevenson was born. The internationally respected author was a favourite with young and old lovers of literature.
When five prominent British writers revealed their belief in ghosts they based their stories on personal experience. Did they open themselves to ridicule? Apparently not.
Studies show that 48% of Americans believe in ghosts. Given that Britain is more ghost-friendly I would expect the British percentage of believers to be higher.
Sublime Dreams of Living Machines. Part V. Made by Hans Schlottheim in German, in about 1585, the central figure of the galleon is the Holy Roman Emperor, surrounded by seven noblemen. When the clockwork mechanisms were wound, the ship moved forward over the table and they bowed in front of the Emperor. Miniature figures of the trumpeters and drummers on the deck moved in time to music that was generated by an internal organ and drum. The front canon also fired, lighting a fuse which in turn fired the canons on each side of the ship. The display finished in a cloud of smoke and must have been breathtaking to a 16th-century audience.
Never forgotten was the drama as the Palm Line freighter Enugu Palm after finally answering the wheel skimmed by a metre or two a row of ocean-going freighters moored at the port’s quays. A second’s delay on the part of Captain Inés would have led to one of the worst shipping disasters in African history.
Michael Walsh Stories and Books 
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