Fame At Last.

[Dave]

There are a great many people who are famous and rightly so, but there are many others who deserve fame yet go unnoticed. Some have heroic tales to tell, some are funny and some are just amazing. This first person, Violet Jessop, is an example of someone with a story to tell that is hard to believe, but nonetheless true.

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[boatbuilder]

Here's another 'couple':

Despite taking America by storm in the 1930s, Hawaiian music was held back because its principle instrument, the guitar, wasn’t loud enough to be heard by a large audience.
Enter George Beauchamp who teamed-up with Adolph Rickenbacker to create the first electric guitar.
Made from aluminium and with two horseshoe-shaped magnets, its circular body and long neck inevitably attracted the nickname ‘the frying pan’.
It was patented in 1937 and made the Texan, George, a millionaire.
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[Dave]

With Lowestoft having one of the oldest lifeboat stations in the British Isles the story of Cromer's Henry Blogg should be of interest to many of this site's members. Henry was one of the most decorated lifeboatmen in RNLI history and is referred to as "the greatest of the lifeboatmen".

The video is Part 1 of Henry's story and at the end the link for Part 2 should appear in the top left hand corner.

For anyone interested in the history of Lowestoft's lifeboat station click here.

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[Dave]

In 1953 Everest was conquered and the man who is always mentioned is Edmund Hillary. Alongside him, though, was Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, who was renowned for his skill in mountaineering.

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[Dave]

When Helen Keller lost both her sight and hearing she was just 19 months old and yet she overcame the adversity of being blind and deaf to become one of the 20th century's leading humanitarians. She didn't do this alone though, but with the help of her teacher, Anne Sullivan, her companion for 49 years. This is the story of two extraordinary women.

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[Dave]

Walter Tull was one of English football's first black players and the British Army's first ever black officer to command white troops.

But 100 years after he died aged 29 on the battlefields of World War One, the name Walter Tull means little to most people.

Tull was an orphan who had to overcome adversity all of his life, including being racially abused while a pioneering forward for Tottenham Hotspur and Northampton Town.

His death received little media attention at the time, and it is only in recent years that his powerful story has started to be fully recognised, in large part due to the work of historian and biographer Phil Vasili.

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[Dave]

Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary, was the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen associated with typhoid fever. She was presumed to have infected 51 people, three of whom died, over the course of her career as a cook. She was twice forcibly isolated by public health authorities and died after a total of nearly three decades in isolation.

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[Dave]

"So let me introduce to you The one and only Billy Shears And Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

So was Billy Shears a real person or just a character in a Beatles song, read on and find out.

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[boatbuilder]

What do YOU believe, Dave? Sounds convincing.......DNA springs to mind.

[Dave]

I think it's a story that has probably grown and grown, boatbuilder, until nobody can remember when and where it started. It makes a good story and gives the conspiracy theorists something to talk about, and that's about it.

[Dave]

The annals of history record the name of Hastings as the site of the last invasion of mainland Britain by Norman forces in 1066. True, this was the last successful invasion. However, little is reported about the French invasion of Fishguard, which took place in southwest Wales in 1797, nor of the brave resistance offered by Jemima Nicholas, also known as “Jemima Fawr” (Jemima the Great), who single-handedly captured twelve of the invading soldiers.

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[Dave]

The Story of an Unsung 9/11 Hero

Benjamin Clark saved hundreds of lives in the South Tower. But he wasn’t a firefighter or a cop, he was a chef.

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[boatbuilder]

Thanks for posting that Dave. Very interesting. It's a pity the video quality is not so good.

[Dave]

Lieutenant-Colonel John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill, DSO & Bar, MC & Bar (16 September 1906 – 8 March 1996), was a British Army officer who fought throughout the Second World War armed with a longbow, bagpipes, and a basket-hilted Scottish broadsword.
Nicknamed "Fighting Jack Churchill" and "Mad Jack", he was known for the motto: "Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed."

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[Dave]

John R Fox

An American soldier during World War II, John R. Fox was killed in action when his position was so compromised that there was no way left to decimate the enemy except for calling an artillery strike on his very own position. His actions led to a halt in a German offensive in the Northern Italian region. It wasn’t until 1997 that his services were recognized and he was awarded the Medal of Honour, posthumously.

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