Worlds of Fascination

Mother Shipton and Cardinal Wolsey On a dark and stormy night in 1488 a young woman lay in a dark cave on the banks of the River Nidd in Knaresborough in North Yorkshire struggling to give birth to her illegitimate daughter. As the rain lashed down and the lightning crackled across the sky, Agnes Sontheil laboured through the night until her baby was born. The young mother called her infant daughter Ursula and the cave was to be their home for the next two years. Eventually, after the...

red squirrel, and before the last quarter of the 19 th century they numbered in the millions and ranged across the whole country. Red squirrels are easily recognisable by their striking red coats, bushy tails and tufts of red fur on their ears. Their preferred habitat is conifer forest, where they live off pine cones, seeds, shoots and fruit. The red squirrel tends to be a solitary animal except during the mating season, when they build large nests called dreys in the forks of trees producing...

Every so often a discovery is made that rocks the archaeological world to its core. One of these amazing discoveries was the uncovering of a strange, diminutive hominid skeleton on the island of Flores in Indonesia. Nicknamed the ‘Hobbit’, the remains of the this new dwarf species of human was discovered in 2003 in the vast limestone caves at Liang Bua Cave by a joint Australian-Indonesian team led by Mike Morwood from Australia’s Wollongong University. At the time, Morwood’s team were...

The UK doesn’t have any very large native big cat species, but over the past few weeks there has been a spate of mutilated animal carcasses found across the Cotswolds. Our largest native cat is the ScottishWildcat, which is now unfortunately a very rare and reclusive species, with only around four hundred still remaining in the more remote areas of the Scottish Highlands. So what creature is it that has now killed several deer and three wallabies in the rolling English countryside, where the...

Throughout history there have been many lost treasures. Some have been miraculously found like the gold treasure of Troy unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann and some remain lost in the sands of time, perhaps still awaiting discovery. One such lost treasure that has not yet been found again is the Amber Room, which is believed to be worth at least £150 million in today’s money. What makes the disappearance of the Amber Room so unusual is that it was a whole dismantled room that was lost and that...

Introduced Red Fire Ants – Relentless Invaders Queen Red Fire Ant What Are Red Fire Ants? What Damage Do Introduced Red Fire Ants Cause? Red Fire Ant Distribution Map USA So Why Are People So Scared of Red Fire Ants? Red Fire Ants Go For World Domination The red fire ant has cost the United Stated millions of pounds in damage and destruction of crops, and a wealth of pain and fear for people, livestock and family pets. There are also many recreational areas that are no longer being enjoyed...

For some reason we are all very interested in famous royal mistresses. The love lives of kings and princes is endlessly interesting to us, and much of our British royalty throughout history has kindly fed this interest by having fascinating and complicated love lives. One of these historic personages who enjoyed liaisons with many different mistresses was George, Prince of Wales, who would go on to become the Prince Regent and then King George IV. It has to be said that the Prince of Wales,...

How would you feel if you were taking a gentle stroll through the bush in the Australian Outback, and you suddenly found yourself nose-to-nose with a giant wombat-like creature? Well, this would have been the experience of the first aboriginal people who landed in Australia, as the island continent was at that time home to a creature called Diprotodon. Diprotodon was probably the largest marsupial that ever walked the planet and made its home in Australia between 2 million and 25,000 years...

Are robins your favourite garden bird? Robins are probably one of the best known of the garden birds, and even people who are just not into birds would be able to name a robin. So what makes robins so popular? Well, robins are very cute little birds, with their rounded bodies, bright red breasts, and button-bright eyes. Robins are also cheeky birds, and once having set up their territory in your garden, will follow you around while you do your gardening and let you get quite close to them....

Nefertiti is regarded as being one of the most beautiful of the Ancient Egyptian Queens, but she is also a very enigmatic Queen. Although today the image of Nefertiti is famous the world over, with the bust of Nefertiti in the Berlin museum being one of the most famous sculptures of the ancient world and her exquisite face adorning everything from jewelry, to scarves to tea towels, we still do not know the origins of Nefertiti or what happened to her at the end. There has been much...

The Twelve Days of Christmas ? Traditionally, the Twelve Days of Christmas begin with Christmas Day as the first day and end on the eve of Epiphany on 5 th December. The Twelve Days of Christmas are celebrated very differently from country to country, as in some places they give gifts on Christmas Day, in some gifts are given on Twelfth Night and in some places gifts are given on each of the twelve days. As this time of year is the darkest in the northern hemisphere bringing the light back...

The US Greeting Card Association estimates that around one billion Valentine’s cards are sent each year around the world timed to arrive on the 14 th February, a huge number that is only eclipsed by the number of Christmas cards sent annually. The modern phenomenon that is St Valentine’s Day is a triumph of marketing and consumerism; a day where lovers take their partners out for meals in restaurants where the prices have been inflated for the day and plied with red roses, champagne, saucy...

We are very lucky because our planet is blessed with a multitude of beautiful bird species. However, since ancient times birds have been the subject of myths and superstitions, birds were worshipped as gods and there were many old wives tales that grew up around our feathered friends. So what are some of of these bird superstitions and myths? The albatross is a very large seabird that is regarded by sailors as a sign of bad luck. If an albatross was flying around their ship, the sailors...

The United Kingdom has a long and,quite often, bloody history, which has lead to many myths and legends becoming associated with historical places. Windsor is one of the oldest castles in England, and along with its extensive Great Park, is well known for hauntings and paranormal events. One of the most famous legends associated with Windsor Great Park is that of Herne the Hunter and his Wild Hunt. The legend goes that during the reign of King Richard II, Herne was a conscientious keeper on...

Bernard Bruyère. These excavations uncovered an amazingly preserved village comprising of four-room dwellings built of mud-brick set on rubble foundations, that opened out onto a main street that bis-sected the small town. The general plan of the houses comprised an entrance hall, a living area with raised platforms for sitting and sleeping, some smaller rooms for storage and sleeping and an open courtyard that was used for cooking meals and grinding grain into flour for bread.The inhabitants...