The author responsible for this phenomenal output was Mrs Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie. She was born in Torquay and during the first world War she took a job as a hospital dispenser. While she carried out her duties, she learned much about various deadly poisons and the knowledge she gained was to stand her in good stead when, after the …

The Palme d’Or (Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded to the director of the best feature film at the annual Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the organizing committee, and the first was awarded to director Delbert Martin Mann Jr for his film “Marty”. The Palme d’Or was established as the film festival’s highest award until …

Wee folk refers to fairies and their kind. Medieval theologians suggest that wee folk may be a special group of demoted angels, spirits of the dead or fallen angels. Ancient texts say the entities are of a middle nature, i.e., between humans and angels, and that they can inter-marry with humans and bear half-human children. The consistent factor in all …

You have probably seen pictures or films of Vikings – that is, actor who were pretending to be Vikings. These are huge men, wearing horned helmets and burning and pillaging churches and homes with no thought for their victims. These tales were written down by the only people who could write at that time – the monks of the monasteries …

A hundred years ago, Germany was divided into many small states. In one of these states, Prussia, the chancellor or chief minister to the king, was Otto Von Bismarck. A strong and ruthless man, Bismarck built Prussia into the strongest of all German states and made its army feared throughout Europe. When the states were gathered into one empire in …

Most know hobbits as the fictional dwarf-like creatures from J R R Tolkein’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. But scientists discovered the fossilized remains of hobbitlike creatures in Indonesia. They believed them to be a separate species and called them Homo florsiensis or Man of Flores. But some anthropologists refuted that they were a separate species and said the …

In about the tenth century, groups of people began to leave northern India and to travel all over Europe. Being very independent, they kept their original language to a great extent – this is what we now call Romany, and it is a descendant of a form of Sanskrit. Gipdies’ beliefs are basically Christian, but they also have a very …

When Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic in 1942, he thought that the Earth was much smaller than it actually is. As a result, he believed that he had reached India and that the people in the Caribbean islands were Indians. In fact, the ancestors of these people came from north-eastern Asia, perhaps 40,000 years ago. They spread southwards and …

The druids were the priests of the Celtic people who lived in Britain before the Romans came. It is thought that these people arrived in Britain in 500 B.C., when Stonehenge was itself a thousand years old. The druids worshipped trees such as oak and the rowan, and especially the mistletoe, which was supposed to hold the life of the …

The Zodiac killer was a serial killer in California, supposedly responsible for five murders and two failed attempts that took place from 1968 to 1969. He created a sensation and a scare by publishing letters in newspapers with Zodiac as his pen name. In his letters, he used to claim responsibility for murders that had taken place and would disclose …