We love the old days when acrobats and circus performers had prefixes like ‘The Great’ and ‘The Amazing’ in front of their surnames. Truly, it was a golden age (sic transit gloria mundi). One such artiste was the tightrope walker, Charles Blondin (his real name was Jean Francois Gravelet-Blondin), who was known as ‘the Great Blondin’. We were thinking about Blondin just the other day when reading newspaper stories about ‘aerialist’, Nik Wallenda, who tightrope-walked across Niagara last week. ‘The …

Leap Day Stories To celebrate Leap Day (or ‘intercalary day’ or ‘Job’s Birthday’, as it’s also known), we’ve been looking through the newspaper archive to read about some of customs that are/were traditionally observed on this day. Perhaps the most famous Leap Day tradition is that of ‘The Ladies’ Privilege’. Similar to ‘Sadie Hawkins’ Day’, this is the special day on which women can try to finally put an end to his chronic commitment-phobia. But if the answer is ‘nay’ …

Old Newspaper Stories from Previous Hogmanay and New Year‘s Days With time’s winged chariot parked half on the pavement and New Year‘s Day just about to knock on the door and first-foot us all, we thought it‘d be a good time to post some ’On this day‘ Hogmanay and Ne‘erday stories on our Facebook page. Abraham Lincoln‘s New Year Resolution of 1863 As the first of January is often a day for new legislation to arrive on the statute books, …