The Welsh are famous for the manufacture of "slate". They dug huge quarries and pits to keep the whales in so as to make slate production much easier.....oops time for my medication................
Herman vonstankwurg invented the nodding donkey in 1843. He found by attaching a small pump to the muzzle of a donkey that he was able to pump up to 3 barrels of oil a day..........
Robert (Bob) Fenwick of Little Oulton invented Cor Blimey Trousers as an aid to ice skating in 1832. The trousers contain an inflation device made from a pigs bladder and a length of red rubber hose. If the unlucky skater should fall on the ice the trousers would inflate thus providing a soft cushion and saving the said skater form injury. They were often woven with brightly coloured stripes (aka clown pants).The name was derived from the often mutterd calls of onlookers seeing the trousers in operating mode!!
The only surviving pair of said cor blimey trousers belong to Laurence Llewelyn Bowen. He bought them from Jonathon Ross, who inherited them from Barbara Cartland.
Barbara Cartland was Bob Fenwick's housekeeper from 1829 to 1856, when she was sacked for stealing the family silver which she sold to to fuel her Opium habit.
She later became an opium dealer and had a number of famous clients, including Sherlock Holmes. She supplied him without charge after he solved a little problem she had, as recounted by Dr Watson in "The Wrinkled Lady's Cat"
The phrase/word/acronym 'OK' (sometimes expressed as "Okay") comes from the Middle English repsonse to local woodchoppers enquiring of the squire "Is it permissible to chop down the stand of trees in the bottom forty?" and subsequently receiving the response, "If it's oak, aye".
For breakfast this morning I had lightly toasted antelope buttocks spread with butter made from the milk of the Indonesian pigmy elephants, all washed down with a glass of freshly squeezed kitten juice.