The Rules of the Games in Tudor England | Lapham s Quarterly laphamsquarterly.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from laphamsquarterly.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Piccadilly line was first opened as the Great Northern, Piccadilly & Brompton Railway from Finsbury Park and Hammersmith in 1906, when one in five Britons could not read and write.
ON MAY 3, The Anvil celebrated its 27th birthday. Although the anniversary came amidst the deision by Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council to cut funding for Anvil Arts, this entertainment centre is still Basingstoke’ pride. Here The Gazette dips into its archives to take a look at the history of performance in Basingstoke. Theatres have existed in England since the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in the 16th century. The first permanent one was The Theatre in Finsbury Fields, London, which was built in 1576. Prior to this, plays were first performed in churches as part of the service, these being dramatised versions of Bible stories.
See, we weren t making it up
If you ve ever stopped at Finsbury Park station, you may have clocked the mosaic tiles depicting vintage hot air balloons.
They look serene enough, but in truth they recall an age when
Londoners were foaming at the mouth over the latest daredevil craze. In September 1784, in Finsbury Fields, Vincenzo Lunardi became the first human to fly in England, accompanied by a confused dog, a puzzled cat and a seen-it-all-before pigeon.
After that, London was hooked.
Vincent Lunardi, the first human to fly in England, ready to ascend (1785), by John Kay
But if Lunardi s sounds like a perplexing floating menagerie, London had to wait another 68 years for the bizarrest and perhaps cruellest balloon stunt of all. It involved a seasoned French aeronaut, Madame Poitevin, and a bull and it would put a stop to the frankly demented practice of forcing animals to fly.