229
Samuel Smiles warned that taking care of the pennies should not come before taking care of living.
Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help (1859), like his later book Thrift (1875), urged readers to economise. He was not advocating penny-pinching, or becoming Ebenezer Scrooge. To him, thrift or economy was not really about saving money: it was about allocating money to things that matter, rather than things that don’t.
Picture: Matthias Stom (fl. 1615–1649), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted August 3 2022
230
Statesmen promise to make the country a better place, but they never mention the one thing that would do some good.
In Self-Help; with Illustrations of Conduct and Perseverance (1859), Scottish motivational writer Samuel Smiles attempted to stir ordinary citizens to self-improvement. He put very little faith in condescending speeches by well-heeled politicians promising to better the lot of the working classes. If the working man needed anything doing, he had better do it himself.
Picture: Engraved by Robert Hicks (active 1800-1836), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted August 3 2022
231
Amy Johnson of Hull had clocked only ninety hours of flying experience before taking off alone for Australia.
On May 5th, 1930, Amy Johnson left Croydon Airport at the controls of her Gipsy Moth biplane, bound for Australia. She reached India in six days, but hopes of breaking more records were dashed by a catalogue of mishaps. The day before she landed at Darwin on May 24th, the first woman to complete the solo flight, Stanley Spooner of Flight International reminded readers what a feat it would be.
Picture: By the Fairfax Corporation, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted August 2 2022
232
On the evening of October 7th, 1777, as fighting on Bemis Heights subsided, Harriet Acland came to General Burgoyne with a startling request.
The British surrender at Saratoga on October 17th, 1777, was a turning point in the American Revolutionary War (1776-1783) because it brought France in on the colonists’ side. In his account of the fighting, the English general John Burgoyne recalled what happened on the night of the 7th — with the contest still in the balance — after Harriet Acland heard that her husband John had been captured.
Picture: By Hugh Charles McBarron, Jr. (1902-1992), via the US Army Center for Military History and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted August 1 2022
233
However grim and severe the thirteenth century baron might be in his public duties, at dinner-time it was all wine, laughter and song.
The English barons of the thirteenth century were men lordly and stern, knights bold enough to present King John with the Great Charter at Runnymede in 1215, and to bring John’s son Henry III to heel at the Battle of Lewes in 1264. But they could afford to unbend a little at home, where they kept a splendid and lively table.
Picture: , via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted July 28 2022
234
Peoples of another culture or region will not long tolerate a Government that uses guns and soldiers to secure their obedience.
By the 1720s, there were already rumblings of discontent coming from England’s American colonies, but John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon warned against strictness from London. When government of a distant or culturally different people falls to your lot, the only way to keep them on side is to give them a mutually satisfactory degree of freedom and self-determination.
Picture: © Eric Cosmides, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
Posted July 28 2022