History – ThomasJPitts.co.uk

ThomasJPitts 23rd September 2018

2018, History, Photographs

Photos: Quarry Bank Mill

Quarry Bank Mill (also known as Styal Mill) in Styal, Cheshire, England, is one of the best preserved textile mills of the Industrial Revolution and is now a museum of the cotton industry. Built in 1784, the mill is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building, and inspired the 2013 television series The Mill. This was our second visit […]

ThomasJPitts 29th October 2016

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366?, History, Photographs

303: When is a skyscraper not a skyscraper?

The Newby-McMahon Building is in downtown Wichita Falls, Texas. It is 12 metres tall, and its exterior dimensions are 5.5 metres deep and 3.0 metres wide. By Travis K. Witt (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons The building is the result of a fraudulent investment scheme in 1919. A large oil field was discovered in Wichita […]

ThomasJPitts 12th September 2016

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366?, Awesomeness, History, Music

257: What is the oldest known melody?

My love of music, listening, playing and creating, is a huge part of my life. I’ve never really considered where music was first written down. I assume, perhaps wrongly, that the first rhythms were created by banging things in a percussive way. Recently I came across an article that spoke of the first notated music. […]

ThomasJPitts 10th August 2016

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366?, History, Photographs

224: What is it like at the Yorkshire Air Museum?

They have planes. Like these:

ThomasJPitts 21st July 2016

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366?, History, Photographs

204: What is it like at Bradford Industrial Museum?

Like this:

112: What is the best way to commemorate the Queen’s birthday?

ThomasJPitts 21st April 2016

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366?, Awesomeness, History

112: What is the best way to commemorate the Queen’s birthday?

I have never met the Queen, but I do admire and respect her and believe she does a great deal to help our country. The BBC has produced this lovely page with a photograph for each year of her life. It can’t possibly sum up everything she has done, but it covers so many wonderful […]

Scan of original photographic print of John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury. [via Wikipedia]

ThomasJPitts 29th March 2016

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366?, History

89: Why are bank holidays so called?

This is something I have never really thought about, but it has cropped up twice in my life this week. The first time was when a friend and I were discussing it. We settled on the idea that it was the banks that enforced it through pressure on the government to ease workload for them. […]

ThomasJPitts 12th February 2016

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366?, Awesomeness, History, OK Go, Photographs

43: Why not write on walls?

Yesterday I posted the OK Go optical illusion fest that is their video for The Writing’s On The Wall. Today, I read an article on how it has recently been discovered that Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins wrote on the walls of their Apollo 13 command module to help them during their flight. […]

The Leaning Tower Of Pisa, circa 1890-1900

ThomasJPitts 10th February 2016

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366?, History

41: Why Doesn’t The Leaning Tower Of Pisa Fall Over?

Whether they’re small houses or tall skyscrapers, the buildings we live in have nice straight walls to hold up our ceilings. The Leaning Tower Of Pisa took 199 years to build, starting in 1173, but stood straight for only the first 5 years. As soon as they added the 3rd story, it started tilting. The […]

ThomasJPitts 15th December 2013

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365, Geocaching, History

Day 349: Nearly There…

Today was meant to be a day of organising things for the remaining five teaching days of 2013. That hasn’t happened. Spending yesterday doing very little has meant that today was spent catching up on jobs that have been a little neglected recently around the house. The small things seem to take forever at the […]