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POPSMasai warriors and the London Marathon
The warriors, who arrive in Britain next week for the race on Sunday April 13, have also been advised not to be too offended by the brief running attire of their fellow competitors in the marathon. "You will see many people who are wearing only small clothes and you will wonder why they are cold and may think they are being disrespectful. "This is normal for England, especially when it is sunny or in the evening. However, it is illegal to show certain parts of the body and for this reason it is important that you wear underpants if you are wearing your blankets." The guide provides a tour of a typical home, complete with description of what happens in a bathroom and at meal times. "People in England eat with knives, forks and spoons. If you want to use just a spoon or fork or hands then it is not a worry. "Many people drink alcohol in England. They do so at bars, at homes or at clubs - the English equivalent to a Masai party. "When people drink they sillier or
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POPSBeautiful tropical birds at London Zoo For anyone thinking how vibrant and crystal clear the picture of Queen Victoria is, it should be pointed out that in keeping with the Victorian theme of the building, Queen Victoria impersonator Sylvia Strange attended the launch, alongside an impersonator playing her lady-in-waiting. The Queen did however visit the zoo several times during her reign. She became the patroness of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) in 1837. The pavilion took a year to restore and is named after ZSL patron David Blackburn who agreed to underwrite the costs.
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POPSWorld's best-known protest symbol turns 50 Gerald Holtom, the designer and a former WWII conscientious objector from London, considered using a Christian cross motif but, instead, settled on using letters from the semaphore alphabet, superimposing N(uclear) on D(isarmament) and placing them within a circle symbolising Earth. The sign was quickly adopted by CND. How the sign migrated to the US is explained in various ways. Some say it was brought back from the Aldermaston protest by civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, a black pacifist who had studied Gandhi's techniques of non-violence. American pacifist Ken Kolsbun said: "The sign really got going over here during the 1960s and 70s, when it became associated with anti-Vietnam protests." As the sign became a badge of the hippie movement of the late 1960s, the hippies' critics scornfully compared it to a chicken footprint, and drew parallels with the runic letter indicating death. In the 1980s it became the banner of the international grassroots anti-nuclear movemen
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POPSNo more bendy buses for London. Whew! What, has common sense finally raised its head in the Mayor's Parlour? Bendy buses may well be popular with passengers, but in central London they are totally unsuitable for the Capital's roads and cause more problems than they solve. The opinions expressed are those of this Clipper only. Other opinions are of course available.
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POPSOnly English prisoner at Auschwitz dies, 97 In his book, An Englishman in Auschwitz, Mr Greenman described their arrival in Birkenau. "The women were separated from the men: Else and Barny were marched about 20 yards away to a queue of women...I tried to watch Else. I could see her clearly against the blue lights. She could see me too for she threw me a kiss and held up our child for me to see. What was going through her mind I will never know. Perhaps she was pleased that the journey had come to an end." Mr Greenman later said that the hope of being reunited with Else and Barney kept him going in the gruelling days ahead. After learning his wife and son had been gassed, Mr Greenman dedicated his life to educating people about the holocaust and fighting racism. He never remarried, grieving for his lost family all his life, and spent his last years living at his home in Ilford, east London.
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POPSImages of Nijinski Vaslav Nijinsky was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1989 and was one of the most gifted male dancers in history and he became celebrated for his virtuosity and for the depth and intensity of his characterisations. Nijinsky had a nervous breakdown in 1919 and his career effectively ended. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and taken by his wife Romola (a Hungarian countess) to Switzerland where he was treated by psychiatrist Eugene Bleuler. He spent the rest of his life in and out of psychiatric hospitals and asylums. Romola devoted her life entirely to his care and her devotion to him was complete. Nijinsky died in a London clinic on 8 April 1950 and interred in London until 1953 when his body was reburied in Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris, France.
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POPSTram Ticket Dairy Adverts Advertising by other businesses on the reverse of transport tickets is not a new idea. The following date from the 1920s to the 1960s.
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POPSSaved by the Demolition Man The Victorian Society (set up in 1958 by John Betjeman and Nikolaus Pevsner) is celebrating 50 years of trying to save the UK's 19thC buildings. We love Victorian architecture now, but once their public buildings were being listed for demolition. The following pictures show 10 examples of some wonderful architecture from the 19thC and early 20thC, saved for the enjoyment of future generations.
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POPSThe Frog from Hell Prof Susan Evans, who studied Beezebufo with Dr Marc Jones at UCL says: "This frog, a relative of today's Horned frogs, would have been the size of a slightly squashed beach-ball, with short legs and a big mouth. If it shared the aggressive temperament and 'sit-and-wait' ambush tactics of living Horned toads, it would have been a formidable predator on small animals. Its diet would most likely haveconsisted of insects and small vertebrates like lizards, but it's not impossible that Beelzebufo might even have munched on hatchling orjuvenile dinosaurs."
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POPSGrisly History Sir Hugh's wife asked for his bones to be buried on his family's Gloucestershire estate but only the head, a thigh bone and a few vertebrae were returned to her. These are the bones that are missing from the Hulton Abbey skeleton. In addition, the abbey formed part of the estate of Sir Hugh's brother-in-law, Hugh Audley, and it is thought the family may have chosen to bury what remained of their disgraced relative there.
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POPSNasser al-Din Shah Qajar Or, to give him his full name: Qadar-qadrat-i-Qavvi--Shaukat-i-Shahanshah-i-Jam Jah din Panah-i-Zillu'llah ul-Mamdud fi'l-ardin Ghias-ul-Islam va-ul-Muslimin us-Sultan ul-Azam va Khaqan ul-Afkham Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar
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POPSThe Illustrated London News The magazine was published weekly until 1971, when it became a monthly. From 1989, it was published bi-monthly, then quarterly. The magazine is no longer being published, but the Illustrated London News Group still exists.
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POPSJet noise risk to sleepers Professor Graham McGregor, an expert in blood pressure, said the study was interesting, but more work would have to be done to confirm the link. He said people who lived close to airports tended to be poor, and high blood pressure was associated with poverty.
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POPSMary Seacole: Black British Heroine Mary Jane Grant was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805. Her father was a Scottish soldier, and her mother a Jamaican. Mary learned her nursing skills from her mother, who kept a boarding house for invalid soldiers. Although technically 'free', being of mixed race, Mary and her family had few civil rights - they could not vote, hold public office or enter the professions. In 1836, Mary married Edwin Seacole but the marriage was short-lived as he died in 1844.
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POPSOn this day, Bernardo O'Higgins . . . In 1810, he joined the nationalist rebels fighting for independence from Spain. In 1814, his Chilean rebels were defeated by the Spanish and retreated into the Andes. In 1817, O'Higgins went back on the offensive with the aid of Argentine General José de San Martín. On February 12, 1817, he led a cavalry charge that won the Battle of Chacabuco. He became the first leader of independent Chile, and was granted dictatorial powers as Supreme Director on February 16, 1817. On February 12, 1818, Chile was proclaimed an independent republic.
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POPSPenn's Pictures “We think he’s one of the greatest living artists in any medium, and we like to focus on whole bodies of work. We’re seeing these pictures as if they’re Monet’s waterlilies, a single coherent body of work.” Weston Naef, Getty Museum’s senior photography curator,
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POPSSuper Tuesday Primary - in London UK-based Democrats have turned out in central London to vote for their choice of presidential candidate. The expats participated in what the party has described as its "global primary". Alongside contests in the US on Super Tuesday, supporters in 34 countries have been voting by post, fax, the internet and in person at town halls, pubs, churches and other venues. With the race between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama increasingly close, the expat vote could prove crucial in deciding who gets the Democratic Party nomination. Bill Barnard, chairman of Democrats Abroad UK, said the overseas vote could turn out to be significant if the race goes to the wire.
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POPSMarcus Garvey In 1922 Garvey was arrested for mail fraud in connection with the sale of stock in the Black Star Line, which had now failed. Although there were irregularities connected to the business, the prosecution was probably politically motivated, as Garvey's activities had attracted considerable government attention. Garvey was sent to prison and later deported to Jamaica. In 1935, he moved permanently to London where he died on 10 June 1940. In 1964, his body was returned to Jamaica where he was declared the country's first national hero.
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POPSPaintings of Arthur Sisley Alfred Sisley (October 30, 1839 – January 29, 1899) was an English Impressionist landscape painter who lived and worked in France.
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POPSPygmies go all Hi-Tec Dr Jerome Lewis is a British anthropologist from University College London who has devoted much of the last 20 years studying the pygmy groups who live in the forests of the Congo basin. Dr Lewis together with the UK-based software company Helveta, Forest People's Programme, and the Cameroonian Centre for Environment and Development, are working together to pioneer the use of hand-held computers among the Baka pygmies. Now, when the villagers go into the forest to hunt and gather, they carry a GPS on which they can record the exact location of their hunting grounds, sacred trees and important rivers. "Before, if somebody wanted to come in and chop down one of their trees, there was no record, no proof that it ever existed on their lands. Now we have the proof," explains Dr Lewis.
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POPSThe 'Anthropocene Age' ? To some, it may seem obvious that humans are massively changing the environment, but what Zalasiewicz had to do was show that 10, 100, 500 million years down the line, if you were to slice through a chunk of sediment you would be able to identify a distinct layer that corresponds to our reign on Earth. The group says there is enough evidence around to suggest this will be the case. Ocean acidification, if it continues, could bring an end to corals which will change the nature of ocean rocks. Humans activities have triggered huge amounts of erosion, generating a new layer of sediment. Widespread agriculture is replacing natural vegetation with large expanses of single crops. Cutting down forests, draining marshlands and peat bogs, transforming the prairies have pushed out the animal and plant species that live there and caused them to go extinct. All of the above will mean that one day, the fossil record of our time will look very different to the pre-Anthropocene record.
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POPSElection Fever Epidemic Hits World Much of the fervid absorption in the primaries and caucuses — accessible as never before on 24-hour satellite and cable television channels like CNN and Fox News — seems inspired by a hope that the American electoral process will end an era of foreign policy dominance by neoconservatives. It is, perhaps, too early to guess what specific changes Europeans and other non-Americans expect from a new government. Many of America’s Asian trading partners worry about what they see as Democratic proclivities toward economic protectionism and stricter targets on greenhouse gas emissions. But there are broader concerns. As Ramesh Thakur, a political science professor in India, wrote: “We foreigners can but pray that the new president, whoever he or she may be, will return America to its strengths, values and the tradition of exporting hope and other optimism. And so help to lift America and the world up, not tear one another down.”
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POPSClassic London Transport posters The 1940s and 50s was a period, in England, when the public were encouraged to explore Britain's countryside and archaeology. Writers such as John Betjeman and Niklaus Pevsner had already begun to produce architectural guides to the counties of England. These pictorial posters were part of a series published by London Transport in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
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POPSFrom Russia: With Dance The Russians had pulled out at the last minute, fearing that descendants of the original owners of The Dance and other masterpieces seized by the Soviet government after the Revolution might be able to prevent their return to Russia. Thanks to the new law, that can't happen - now or in the future. The stakes could hardly have been higher. The Hermitage, Pushkin, Tretyakov and State Russian Museums have all lent unstintingly to an exhibition that tells the story of artistic interchanges been France and Russia between 1870 and 1925. (DT)
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POPSSharia law - British style Dr Hasan, who is also a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain on issues of sharia law, says there is great misunderstanding of the issue in the West. He makes the distinction between the aspects of law that sharia covers: worship, penal law, and personal law. Muslim leaders in Britain are interested only in integrating personal law, he says. "Penal law is the duty of the Muslim state - it is not in the hands of any public institution like us to handle it. Only a Muslim government that believes in Islam is going to implement it. So there is no question of asking for penal law to be introduced here in the UK - that is out of the question." Despite this, Dr Hasan is open in supporting the severe punishments meted out in countries where sharia law governs the country. "Even though cutting off the hands and feet, or flogging the drunkard and fornicator, seem to be very abhorrent, once they are implemented, they become a deterrent for the whole society. "Once, just only once, if an
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POPSMRSA USA300 hits whom it wants. “It’s really meant to be used to mean all inclusive, including the men-who-have-sex-with-men population,” he said. “It’s not just gay people that get it,” he said. “You can get it anywhere.” Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which helped finance the study, affirmed on Wednesday that the disease was not sexually transmitted or limited to a certain type of person. It is transmitted through skin-to-skin contact, the agency said in a statement, and is widespread in hospitals and among hospital workers. “These infections occur in men, women, adults, children and persons of all races and sexual orientations,” the statement read, adding that while the particular strain identified in the report had been found in gay men, it had also been found in people who were not gay. (NYT)
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POPSIT 'Anorak' . . . Web . . . al-Qa'eda hate Tsouli, a Moroccan diplomat's son who came to Britain in 2001 and studied at an IT college in London, had been creating a website called Youbombit. By 2003, he was posting his own material, including a manual on computer hacking. Later he moved on to publishing extremist images and al-Qa'eda propaganda online. (DT)
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POPSAfrika! Afrika! The shows is in London until April, when it moves to Birmingham, Manchester and Dublin
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POPSWhen fish becomes contraband “Fish and chips used to be a poor man’s treat, but with the prices, it’s becoming a delicacy,” said Mark Morris, a fishmonger for 20 years in London’s enormous Billingsgate market.
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