The Allard J2/J2X was a British sports car produced in 1949 by Sydney Allard of south London. They were powered by a 5420 cc Ford V-eight engine providing 180 bhp and a top speed of 209 kmh and acceleration of 0-60 mph in 5.9 seconds. Research Allard J2
The Broad Arrow is a symbol used as a royal mark on government stores. It was the cognisance of Viscount Sydney, Earl of Romney, who was the master- general of the Ordnance from 1693 to 1702. Research Broad Arrow
The Challenger Expedition was a scientific and exploring expedition carried out at the expense of the British Government by means of the ship Challenger, a frigate-built vessel of about 2000 tons, fully equipped with all the most improved scientific appliances for ascertaining the depth, temperature, currents, etc, of the ocean, and the character of the ocean bottom, and for amassing natural history specimens. The ship set sail on December the 7th, 1872, under the command of Captain (afterwards Sir) George Nares, Professor (afterwards Sir) Wyville Thomson being at the head of the scientific staff attached to the ship. In the course of the expedition the ship called at Madeira, Teneriffe, the Bermudas, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Cape Verde Islands, Cape of Good Hope, Kerguelen Islands, Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, Japan, Valparaiso, etc, returning home by way of the Strait of Magellan, and arriving on May the 24th, 1876. During the three and a half years of the cruise the ship traversed about 70,000 nautical miles, and a vast amount of highly useful information was accumulated, the results being published at government expense in a great many volumes. Several popular works on the expedition were also published. Research Challenger Expedition
Dr Who is a British BBC science-fiction television series for children, created in part by Sydney Newman and Verity Lambert, and originally starring William Hartnell, in stories about a renegade alien able to travel through space and time, known as a 'Time Lord', battling evil through space and time, equipped with a time machine which looked like a 1960's policetelephone box - the TARDIS - and later a 'sonic screwdriver'. Dr Who ran from 1963 to 1989, before being returned in 2005 following public demand. Dr Who is remarkable for many things, not least making eerily accurate predictions about future life; in the first story, shown in 1963, the British adoption of the decimal money system was correctly predicted and in a later story a British female Prime Minister was predicted. Research Dr Who
A scam is a trick or fraud. All scams rely on a single premise in order to function; the greed of the victim. Popular scams through the ages have ranged from low-key confidence tricks such as the 'find the lady' scam performed on street corners by card sharps in which victims are encouraged to bet on being able to locate the position of a specific playing card - often a queen - which is in a row of three cards mixed by the performer, though elaborate frauds such as the 'sale' of London's Tower Bridge or Australia's Sydney Opera House to unsuspecting foreign millionaires. A popular scam is the 'get rich quick' scam in which victims are invited to send money for details or a book proffering to detail a sure-fire method of achieving immense earnings with negligible effort. The secret to doing so is to place adverts in newspapers or on the Internet inviting people to send money for details or a book detailing how to earn vast income with negligible effort.
During the late 1990's a new scam appeared in Britain, or at least became more obvious. That of the 'male escort'. Adverts appeared, generally in free newspapers where advertising rates are very low, purporting to be recruiting 'male escorts', and explaining that age, size and looks are unimportant to earn up to five-hundred pounds a night with the implied bonus of having sex with beautiful women. The 'agencies' offering to recruit such men in reality require interested parties to send a registration fee for inclusion in their catalogue of escorts. Any cynical prospect who considers checking the agency catalogue first, to ensure that they are genuine, finds that prospective customers also have to send a registration fee before being allowed access to the catalogue. In comparison, genuine escort agencies do not require a registration fee from clients, instead the client simply contacts the agency with their requirements and is suggested a suitable escort, which they may then contact or gracefully decline.
The growth of the Internet saw with it the growth of another scam. That of the 'affiliate scheme' where naïve web site publishers are enticed to place an advert for a third company which in turn offers a percentage sales commission for all sales originating from customers who have accessed the web site through the advert placed on the web site publisher's own site. Very often - but not always - these schemes have get out clauses that allow the company to avoid paying sales commission, perhaps because they claim at their discretion that the web site publisher has broken the rules of the affiliation, or because they claim that the customer has not originated from the advert. By paying a small amount of money these scams operate the same as the classic 'find the lady' scam, by enticing a few naïve victims with a small amount of revenue to recommend them to many more naïve victims who never receive anything. Most of the victims of the affiliate scam are teenagers who publish small web sites and who lack the experience to read the contract, and the money to pursue claims for owed monies which are almost impossible to prove anyway.
The most insidious of all scams is 'The Nigerian Scam', which follows a general pattern of a victim receives correspondence, often by email, purporting to come from a close relative of a dead African - originally a Nigerian, whence the name - politician or some such who just before his death deposited a large amount of money in a European bank account. The scam implores the victim to assist in retrieving the money, as the scammer is unable to leave his country. In return, the victim is offered a large amount of money, perhaps as much as $50 million. The victim is asked to contact the scammer and then later is asked to send some money to assist with arrangements, or to travel to Africa with some money to make arrangements. Several victims travelling to Africa have subsequently disappeared, presumed murdered and robbed. Research Scam
Tale of Two Cities is a novel written by Charles Dickens, and first published as a serial in 'All the Year Round' between April the 30th and November the 26th 1859 and concurrently in eight monthly parts. The plot moves between London and Paris during the French Revolution, and revolves around Sydney Carton, a dissipated barrister who gives his life so that Charles Darnay, his rival for the affections of Lucie Manette, may live. Research Tale of Two Cities
The Talgai skull is a fossil humancranium found in 1884 in the Darling Downs squatting district near Talgai, South Queensland, Australia. The fossil attracted no attention until the Sydney meeting of the British Association in 1914. A report presented by Dr S A Smith of Sydney to the Royal Society in 1918 showed the skull to belong to a male of about sixteen years old who was contemporary with Pleistocene marsupials now extinct. The skull's brain capacity was larger than that of modern Australian aborigines, and the enormous palate, while resembling that of the anthropoids more closely than any human jaw yet discovered, most closely resembled the palate of the recently extinct Tasmanians. In 1920 Dubois reported that two skulls found by him in Java in 1890, more primitive than the Australoid, supported the Queensland evidence that early man migrated from Asia into the Australian region in the distant past. Research Talgai Skull
The Edinburgh Review was a quarterly review established in 1802. It had an immediate and striking success, the brilliancy and vigour of its articles being much above the periodical literature of that time. In politics it was Whig, and did good service to the party. The Review was founded by a knot of young men living in Edinburgh, the more prominent of whom were Brougham, Jeffrey, SydneySmith, and E Horner. It was edited from 1803 to 1829 by Jeffrey, under whom it was very successful. Research The Edinburgh Review
Robert Baillie of Jerviswood, in Lanarkshire was a Scottish patriot of the reign of Charles II. He brought himself into notice by opposing the tyrannical measures of Archbishop Sharpe against the Nonconformists, for which he was fined 6000 merks and imprisoned for four months. In 1683 he went to London in furtherance of a scheme of emigration to South Carolina taken up by a number of Scottish gentlemen, as being the only way of escaping the tyranny of the government. He became associated with Monmouth, Sydney, Russell, and the rest of that party, and was charged with complicity in the Rye-house plot. After a long imprisonment, during which vain attempts were made to obtain evidence against him, he was brought before the Court of Justiciary on the 23rd of December 1684, was found guilty, and condemned to be executed that afternoon. Research Robert Baillie
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Allard J2
