by Gareth Rubin
Scott and the advance party reached the Pole only to discover sneaky Norwegian Roald Amundsen had already been there and left his flag. They trekked back, half of them dying on the way. When Scott expired, he was only 11 miles from a big food store – without the scientific equipment weighing them down, he would almost certainly have made it.
On the way back to base camp, Evans developed scurvy, but he survived and eventually commanded the Australian Navy.
MOULD MAN – THE DISCOVERY OF PENICILLIN, 1928
Labs are supposed to be clean environments that prevent contamination of biological samples. So when Alexander Fleming one day left a petri dish containing staphylococcus bacteria – which you really don’t want to get too close to – beside an open window it was bad practice. But he noticed that some of the mould spores which had flown in and were now growing in the dish were killing the nearby bacteria. For a while he called the substance ‘mould juice’ but he soon moved on to ‘penicillin’.
‘When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928 I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionise all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic or bacteria killer. But I suppose that was exactly what I did,’ he observed later, with his trademark modesty.
SLOWING THINGS DOWN – IGNORING JET ENGINES, 1930
In 1930 a young RAF officer designed the world’s first jet aircraft engines. Frank Whittle was only 22 when he patented the design and handed the idea to the Air Ministry. Not only did the Ministry take no action, it also failed to classify such a useful military tool. Ten years later both Italy and Germany had jet aircraft, beating Britain to the goal.
CLEVER KITTY – THE INVENTION OF CAT’S EYES, 1933
Inventor Percy Shaw was driving home from the Old Dolphin pub in Clayton Heights through the Yorkshire fog one night when he suddenly saw the glint of a pair of cat’s eyes through the gloom. He swerved to avoid the moggy and realised that in so doing he had probably just saved his life – the cat was sitting on the fence along the side of the mountain road and, had he not turned sharply, he might otherwise have gone right off the side. He patented his design for reflectors embedded in the road surface and soon they were being installed all over the world.
As Shaw grew older, he had all the carpets and furniture taken out of his house and kept three televisions on at all times – one tuned to BBC1, one on BBC2 and one on ITV. All had the sound muted.
THE RESERVES REACH THE SUMMIT – EDMUND HILLARY AND SHERPA TENZING SCALE EVEREST, 1953
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were never meant to be the first men to reach the top of Mount Everest. They were the back-up team to the completely forgotten pair Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans, who had been selected for the honour by the team leader, Colonel John Hunt. Bourdillon was chosen because he had designed the breathing equipment that they all relied on.
Unfortunately for him, Evans’s set malfunctioned when they were just 100m from the summit. Close enough to spit. They had to descend, and three days later Hillary and Norgay went up in their place. No doubt Bourdillon and Evans wished them all the luck in the world getting up there.
They managed it and Hillary took a photo of Norgay on top of the mountain. Norgay would have reciprocated, but he had never used a camera and didn’t know how to. On descent, Hillary met his friend George Lowe and his first words after reaching the summit of Everest were therefore: ‘Well, George, we knocked the bastard off!’
On 6 June 1953 Hillary was knighted (Norgay was also offered a knighthood but the Indian Prime Minister, Nehru, refused to let him have it) and Time Magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, thus further rubbing Evans and Bourdillon’s noses in it.
* Before De Quincey’s arrival, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Britain’s most pharmaceutically enhanced poet, was in residence at Dove Cottage. His preferred brand of laudanum was Kendal Black Drop – apparently four times the normal strength of the medicine and one for the real aficionado. Without it, his odder, visionary poems – ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, ‘Kubla Khan’, etc. – might never have come about. He wrote to his brother, George: ‘Laudanum gave me repose, not sleep; but, you, I believe, know how divine that repose is, what a spot of enchantment, a green spot of fountain and flowers and trees in the very heart of a waste of sands!’
* Although he was famous for mental instability, extreme narcissism and sleeping with his half-sister, one can’t really blame Byron for being a bit naughty, it was probably in his genes. His father was Captain ‘Mad Jack’ Byron, who abandoned his wife and child after squandering his wife’s fortune and condemning the family to poverty; his grandfather was Admiral ‘Foulweather’ Byron, whose nickname referred to the fact that storms always used to follow him wherever he went and he had a habit of being shipwrecked or imprisoned; and his great uncle was Lord William ‘The Devil’ Byron – so dubbed after he destroyed his family home in order that his hated son would inherit nothing. He also shot his coachman dead because he was irritated by his driving and killed his cousin during an argument about pheasants.
* One of the men to discover hormones, he was later knighted for his contribution to medical knowledge and has the Bayliss Effect (to do with muscle contraction) named after him.
** Coleridge, the great-great-nephew of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was also co-founder of the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
*** Starling was co-discoverer of the Frank–Starling Law of the Heart, which sounds romantic but in fact states that the stroke volume of the heart increases in response to an increase in the volume of blood filling the organ.
**** Dale would go on to win the Nobel Prize for work on the chemical transmission of nerve impulses.
***** Isaacs went on to become Viceroy of India and Attorney General – it was certainly an all-star trial.
If one thing is striking about the behaviour of those who inherit power, it is the levity with which they can exercise it. Land and fortunes may be frittered away according to a personal fondness for beards or national naval strategies decided because a prince’s mistress is also sleeping with his best friend. When you play with nations as you play with streets on a Monopoly board, it’s no surprise that decisions will be made that entire populations will come to regret.
BAD HAIR DAY – HANDING A CHUNK OF FRANCE TO ENGLAND, 1152
When Louis VII returned to France from the Crusades, he had shaved off his beard. His exceptionally powerful wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, found his actual face quite frightening, and demanded the facial hair be regrown. But Louis, like a 14-year-old who really wants people to think he’s an adult, insisted on shaving.
Eleanor promptly divorced him and six weeks later was married to Henry II of England. She took with her nearly a quarter of France as a wedding gift, ushering in three centuries of Anglo-French conflict, including the Hundred Years War.
MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL – HENRY II CREATES A SAINT, 1170
Henry II was a volatile soul. Often he would become so angry that he fell to the ground and chewed straw. This could get him into trouble – as it did in 1170 when he was visiting Normandy and news reached him that Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was still defying him over the power and privileges of the Church.
What Henry really did cry out at that point is up for grabs – the schoolboy version ‘Who will rob me of this turbulent priest?’ is plausible, but the best contemporary account, by one Edward Grim, gives: ‘What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?’ What it lacks in brevity it more than makes up for in eloquence.
But the essential error beloved of gore-loving children remains the same: the four knights who heard the King’s outburst took it as a request, rather than mere speculative wondering and travelled to Canterbury to carry out the assassination. They arrived on 29 December 1170 and, after hiding their weapons under a tree outside the cathedral and throwing cloak
s over their mail armour, they sought out the quarrelsome priest and ordered him to accompany them to Winchester to account for his actions. Becket, however, had other ideas. When he refused, the knights informed him that they might well return, before collecting their weapons and going to plan B, which was murdering him. Anyone who happened to be in the cathedral at the time was then witness to the unusual sight of four knights in full armour sprinting after the Archbishop of Canterbury, swords drawn, attempting to acquaint him with his maker far earlier than he had expected.
Grim was an eyewitness (and actually wounded in the attack). He recorded:
The wicked knight leapt suddenly upon him, cutting off the top of the crown which the unction of sacred chrism had dedicated to God. Next he received a second blow on the head, but still he stood firm and immovable. At the third blow he fell on his knees and elbows, offering himself a living sacrifice, and saying in a low voice, ‘For the name of Jesus and the protection of the Church, I am ready to embrace death.’ But the third knight inflicted a terrible wound as he lay prostrate. By this stroke, the crown of his head was separated from the head in such a way that the blood white with the brain, and the brain no less red from the blood, dyed the floor of the cathedral. [A] clerk who had entered with the knights placed his foot on the neck of the holy priest and precious martyr, and, horrible to relate, scattered the brains and blood about the pavements, crying to the others, ‘Let us away, knights; this fellow will arise no more.’
The clerk was right. Becket was soon canonised by Pope Alexander III and his tomb became the greatest pilgrimage in England – inspiring, in the process, the finest work of early modern English, The Canterbury Tales.
SHOOTING HIMSELF IN THE CASSOCK – THE POPE GIVES IRELAND TO ENGLAND, 1172
Pope Alexander III – known to his mother as Roland – was the man who laid the foundation stone of Notre Dame de Paris. His other great contribution to European history and open-ended religious warfare was handing Ireland to England to make sure the locals would give up their foolish Pagan beliefs, become good Catholics and keep away from any non-Roman ways. Henry II assured the Pope that Catholic Ireland was safe in England’s hands. It wasn’t an easy decision – the Pope had taken a dim view of the murder of Thomas Becket and he didn’t want any funny business with Ireland, he told the King.* In fact, the Pope’s remit to hand over Ireland was all a bit dodgy, since it rested entirely on an obviously forged document.
The Vatican based its authority to do as it pleased with Ireland on the Donation of Constantine. This document claimed to be a record of a decision by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (after whom Constantinople was named), the first emperor to convert to Christianity. The paper, supposedly from 315, gave the Pope religious supremacy over the four great sees of the empire: Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria and Constantinople; and over all Europe too. Somewhat suspiciously, the document did not surface until 754, when the Pope used it to justify taking over a few choice chunks of the continent. This wasn’t just a forgery, it was a rubbish forgery – it named Constantinople as one of the possessions to be handed over, but the city wasn’t even founded until 326, 11 years after the document was apparently written.
AN INSURANCE ISSUE – KING JOHN AND THE CROWN JEWELS, 1216
On 11 October 1216 King John was on his way from Spalding in Lincolnshire to Bishop’s Lynn, Norfolk, when he fell ill and decided to turn back. This meant re-crossing the Wash Estuary. He took the scenic route, sending his baggage train, which included the Crown Jewels, along the causeway and ford across the mouth of the Wellstream. That path, however, was only safe on low tide. Horses, knights and the luggage fell into marsh and quicksand. The original crown jewels, including the crown worn by Edward the Confessor, have never been found.
THE OVER-ENTHUSIASTIC GROOM – ALEXANDER III GOES FOR A RIDE, 1286
Alexander III of Scotland was easily entertained. A widower who had outlived all his children, he had one thing on his mind. According to one mediaeval account, he never suffered from loneliness because ‘he used never to forebear on account of season nor storm, nor for the perils of the flood or rocky cliffs, but would visit none too creditably nuns or matrons, virgins or widows as the fancy seized him’.
Visiting nuns none too creditably was certain a popular pastime for monarchs of the age, but Alexander also needed a son and married Yolande de Dreux with that purpose in mind. One night he had dined in Edinburgh and was in the mood to visit his new wife and see about getting an heir. He rode out in the dark, over a cliff, and left Scotland without a king for six years.
FLATTERY GETS YOU EVERYWHERE – HENRY VIII’S POOR CHOICE OF BRIDE, 1539
Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne of Cleves was unusual in that, instead of having her executed in his usual fashion, he chose instead to execute Thomas Cromwell, who had arranged the match in the first place.
The problems began in 1538 after the death of wife number three, Jane Seymour. Cromwell thought it would be nice if Henry had a new queen to play with and suggested the German Anne of Cleves, who would be a good alliance for political reasons. Henry asked for a painting of Anne to see if he was attracted to her – but it had to be a true representation, not some retouched soft-focus job that made her out to be a beauty when really she looked like a heavyweight boxer at the end of a long fight. Cromwell said that he would see what he could do.
He tried to get a painting knocked up at short notice, but the only decent local painter, one Lucas Cranach, was off sick and the sole existing portrait was out-of-date and someone else had it, anyway.
Henry’s envoy to Anne’s family, Christopher Mont, then asked her father if he could see her himself so he could describe her to Henry. The Duke of Cleves angrily replied: ‘Do you want to see her naked?’ Mont thought about it for a minute, crossed his legs and forced himself to say that wouldn’t be necessary.*
Instead, Henry sent Hans Holbein to paint her, again demanding a true image. A few weeks later, Holbein returned with the portrait but there must have been something about the light in the room where he was working, because the portrait he painted not only made her out to be a lot more attractive than she was but somehow failed to record that her face was pitted with smallpox scars.
After considering the portrait, Henry agreed to the marriage. Given that she was 19 and he was 49, a few commentators of the time suggested that he was getting the better end of the deal, but when she turned up and he saw that she had the sort of face that terrified soldiers, he declared: ‘I am ashamed that men have so praised her as they have done and I like her not.’ (Henry was somewhat less polite later when he described her as ‘a fat Flanders mare’.) In fact, he had brought her a hamper of gifts, but, after seeing her, he chose to keep them to himself. He didn’t even want to go through with the marriage, but Cromwell told him it was too late to back out now and so Henry sullenly agreed.
On the wedding night of 6 January 1540, nothing happened. Henry simply couldn’t bring himself to consummate anything. What he wanted was a divorce, but Anne, for some reason, didn’t seem to mind that her new husband wanted to annul their marriage after 24 hours and found her physically repulsive (the King’s personal physician, William Butts, publicly declared that Henry’s inability to ‘rise to the occasion’ on his wedding night could not be due to any physical problems on his part, because he had experienced ‘duas pollutiones nocturnas in somno’ – ‘two nocturnal pollutions while in sleep’, i.e. two wet dreams). In July Anne agreed to a divorce, however, so long as she got a few nice houses and a pension and could stay in England where – despite not being able to speak English – she seemed to feel at home.
Henry was so incensed with Cromwell over the portrait that had caused all the trouble that he had him arrested and thrown into the Tower. Soon Cromwell’s head and body were travelling in separate coaches.
TO PLAY A QUEEN – THE SUPPLANTING OF ELIZABETH I, 1543
Elizabeth I was something of a trailblazer for the ladies. A strong monarch, she presided
over what was arguably the greatest period of learning, conquest and artistic endeavour England has ever seen. Of course, some people believe she was only able to do so because she was actually a man in a skirt. Among them was Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula.*
If Elizabeth was indeed a man, then his elevation to the throne of England had actually come about as a result of an accident that left the young Elizabeth on her deathbed. The story was uncovered by Stoker when he visited the village of Bisley in the Cotswolds, where he was intrigued by the fact that the May Day celebrations involved a boy May Queen dressed in Elizabethan costume. He investigated further, and the story he uncovered led to his devoting a chapter of his 1910 book Famous Imposters to the story of the Bisley Boy.
The Tradition is that the little Princess Elizabeth, during her childhood, was sent away with her governess for change of air to Bisley, where the strong sweet air of the Cotswold Hills would brace her up. The healthy qualities of the place were known to her father and many others of those around her. Whilst she was at Overcourt [her home there], word was sent to her governess that the King was coming to see his little daughter; but shortly before the time fixed, and whilst his arrival was expected at any hour, a frightful catastrophe happened. The child, who had been ailing in a new way, developed acute fever, and before steps could be taken even to arrange for her proper attendance and nursing, she died. The governess feared to tell her father – Henry VIII had the sort of temper which did not make for the happiness of those around him. In her despair she, having hidden the body, rushed off to the village to find a living girl child who could be passed off for the princess, whose body could be hidden away for the time.
Throughout the little village and its surroundings was to be found no girl child of an age reasonably suitable for the purpose required. More than ever distracted, for time was flying by, she determined to take the greater risk of a boy substitute if a boy could be found. Happily for the poor woman’s safety, for her very life now hung in the balance, this venture was easy enough to begin. There was a boy available, and just such a boy as would suit the special purpose for which he was required – a boy well known to the governess, for the little Princess had taken a fancy to him and had lately been accustomed to play with him. Moreover, he was a pretty boy as might have been expected from the circumstance of the little Lady Elizabeth having chosen him as her playmate. He was close at hand and available. So he was clothed in the dress of the dead child, they being of about equal stature; and when the King’s fore-rider appeared the poor over-wrought governess was able to breathe freely.