The Siege Of Sidney Street was an incident that occurred in 1911 when two members of a gang of Latvian immigrant burglars (the Gardstein Gang) who were fleeing police after breaking into a jewellers' premises in Houndsditch and shooting dead three policemen and wounding two others who had tried to arrest them, sheltered in a second-floor flat at 100 Sidney Street, London. The Metropolitan Police cordoned off the area and evacuated the residents but found their weapons ineffective at flushing out the robbers who were armed with Mauser pistols capable of rapid and accurate fire. The police then requested and were granted assistance from the army, volunteers of the Scots Guards arriving from the Tower of London who with sniper fire forced the robbers to the lower floor. A fire broke out in the building, which the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill refused to allow the fire brigade to extinguish. After half-an-hour of no more shots being fired from the robbers the fire brigade tackled the blaze to prevent damage to other buildings, only for a wall to collapse and bury five people, one of which later died in hospital. The two robbers were found in the gutted building, one had been shot and the other overcome by smoke. The incident noted the ineffectiveness of the police marksmen and their equipment and resulted in better training and weapons to be issued. Research Siege Of Sidney Street
The Balwen Welsh Mountain is a breed of Welsh mountain sheep. The Balwen has a base colour of black/ brown or dark grey, with a white blaze on the face, four white feet and a half white tail. The name Balwen is derived from the Welsh phraseBal meaning white blaze. It is thought farmers over the years used the Balwen as landmarks on the hills as a means of recognizing ones flock. By whatever means, the Balwen has been preserved by the continued belief of committed enthusiasts that the Welsh Mountain is a 'sheep for all seasons'. For many years the Balwen was confined to an area of central Wales on the borders of the old counties of Cardigan, Brecon and Carmarthen. The catchment area of the river Tywi, north of Rhandirmwyn (now the Llyn Brianne Dam) was the breeding grounds for the Balwen sheep, and the ancestry of all Balwens can be traced back to the Tywi valley. The
Balwen Welsh Mountain Sheep is a small very hardy breed. They are easy to manage having very few health problems associated with many of the larger breeds. They have excellent feet requiring little attention and can get by with only the minimum of feeding at peak times of the year. The Balwen is an excellent mother, having very few lambing problems with plenty of milk capable of rearing twin lambs under the right circumstances. Research Balwen Welsh Mountain More information about Balwen Welsh Mountain
The Boston terrier is an American breed of dog, British in origin, based upon terrier lines but with the short head of a bulldog. The coat is black with a white blaze on the head, white collar and ' socks'. The breed was developed during the latter part of the 19th century, and was recognised by the American Kennelclub in 1893. Boston terriers are easy to train and make good companions. Research Boston Terrier
The Finnish Universal is a Finnish breed of versatile horse endowered with pulling power, speed, endurance and agility. The Finnish Universal stands 15.2 hands high and is mostly chestnut in colour, though they can also be bay, grey, black or brown in colour. Many Finnish Universal horses have a white blaze on their face and long, coarse forelocks and mane. Research Finnish Universal
The Gute sheep is the most primitive breed in the collection of breeds that make up the Swedish Landrace breed group. These breeds belong to the North European Short Tailed Breeds and are related to such breeds as the Finnsheep, Romanov, Spelsau, Shetland, Faroe, Orkney and Icelandicsheep. Landrace sheep on the island of Gotland in the Baltic sea were little affected by the importation to Sweden of several long tailed foreign breeds during the 18th and 19th century. The native sheep had a coarse wool of several colours. The vast majority of the rams were horned while females could be either horned or hornless. Few sheep were truly polled, i.e. having depressions on the head at the horn sites. Before 1911 four-horned animals existed. Around 1920 selection among the pure Gotland landrace started, to produce sheep, that were polled in both sexes, with a curly coat and of a uniform grey colour of a decided shade. This selection eventually resulted in the modern Swedish Pelt (sometimes referred to as Gotland Pelt). The Swedish name of that breed
is Palsfar.
After a couple of decades only a few horned sheep with the original type of wool were left. Around 1930 Edward Graelert founded a flock of horned sheep, collected mainly from the north of Gotland. After some years four others, Nils Dahlbeck, Carl Fries, Konrad Hellsing and Arvid Ohlsson also became involved with preserving horned sheep. In 1940 probably less than 20 adult sheep existed in horned flocks on Gotland. In the beginning of the breed a few more horned animals were bought in from polled flocks.
The numbers of Gute sheep have steadily increased and numbers in 1996 were around 4500 ewes and 500 rams in 450 flocks in Sweden with some flocks in Denmark and Germany as well. The most common colour is grey. Dark grey animals have black legs and head while light grey ones also have white and tan hair on these parts of the body. Grey sheep have light hair around the eyes and muzzle. Black sheep occur but it is not certain if these are true black or just very dark grey.
White sheep are seldom pure white, but instead they often have tan patches on the neck and other parts of the body. A few individuals with less common colours have been seen. Almost all non-white sheep have white markings. This can vary from only a small white star on the forehead to a blaze and white tail and white legs. It seems that the light grey sheep have larger white areas than the dark grey ones. Some sheep are piebald.
The wool is coarse, and may be straight or wavy. It is a mixture of fine wool, long coarser hair and kemp fibres. On the neck and along the throat the sheep have long thick mane hair, much more in males than in females. The grey wool is a mixture of white and black fibres, the fine wool is then white and the coarser hair black. In light grey individuals many fibres are tan. In dark grey individuals some of the finer wool is black. The sheep never have wool in the face or on the tip of the tail. Most sheep shed their fleece partly or entirely in the beginning of the summer. Research Gute
The Jacob is a British breed of sheep. Slight of build, with the narrow, lean carcass typical of some of the ancient British breeds, they are immediately noticeable due to their black and white fleeces and prominent horns. Both males and females are horned, sporting two, four and occasionally six horns. Most striking to many people are four-horned rams with two vertical centre horns as much as two feet long, and two side horns curling down along the side of the head. Two-horned rams develop the more familiar classic double curl. Horns on the ewe are always shorter and more delicate than the rams' horns.
The Jacob fleece, which is properly described as white with black spots, is prized by hand spinners and weavers. The white and the black wool, which may fade at the tips to dark brown, may be blended to various shades of greys. The wool is of medium grade, and interestingly, the black wool, which grows out of black skin, frequently is shorter than the white wool, which grows from white skin. Ideally, the animal should be 40% black and 60% white, with certain characteristic patterns. The legs should be predominantly white, with black hooves and black knees and hocks desirable. The desired Jacob face is frequently referred to as 'badger faced' , with black cheeks and muzzle, but a white blaze down the front of the face. The nose should be black as well as the horns and ears.
The striped dolphin or Euphrosyne dolphin or blue-white dolphin (Stenella coeruleoalba) is a pelagic mammal of the family Delphinidae, order Cetacea widely distributed across all temperate, subtropical and tropical seas where they are often seen playing around boats. They may be distinguished from the common dolphin by a pale grey V-shaped should blaze originating above and behind the eye and narrowing to a point below and behind the dorsal fin.
Striped dolphins eat fish, squid and decapod crustaceans, hunting and navigating using echolocation. They are social animals, congregating in schools of between five and several hundred animals. Research Striped Dolphin
A flame is a blaze rising from a burning body, or any inflammable gas in a state of visible combustion. Flame is attended with great heat, and sometimes with the evolution of much light; but the temperature may be intense when the light is feeble, as is the case with the flame of burning hydrogen gas. The flame of a candle may be divided into three zones: an inner zone containing chiefly unburned gas, another zone containing partially-burned gas, and an outer zone where the gas is completely consumed by combination with the oxygen of the air. The luminosity of flame depends upon the presence of extremely small particles of solid matter (usually carbon) or of dense gaseous products of combustion. When the pressure of the gas producing the flame is so great that it is all but flaring, it is found that certain sounds will cause the flame to alter its shape, thus producing the phenomenon of sensitive flames. Research Flame
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