This edited article about General Gordon originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

General Gordon of Khartoum by Graham Coton

In London, the bells were ringing to celebrate the arrival of the New Year. In houses, great and small, glasses were being raised, and in the streets people were linking arms to join in the singing of Auld Lang Syne. It was a time for jollity, of optimism and hope for a better and more prosperous year than the last. A time when the future was something to celebrate.

But far away in the besieged city of Khartoum there was no cause to celebrate the New Year for the very good reason that it promised only suffering and probably death for everyone behind its walls. For nearly three hundred days, the men, women and children there had been surrounded and hemmed in by an evergrowing army of rebels under the control of the fanatical Mahdi, the self-styled Messiah of the Mohammedans.

Already the situation seemed hopeless. The streets swept by shell fire; rations down to the barest minimum for survival; hundreds already carried away by disease; troops continually deserting; the city held daily with the greatest difficulty and loss of life; communications with the outside world completely cut off: it was hardly surprising that those who still survived saw no reason to celebrate that first day of 1885.

It was, sadly, a situation which would not have occurred but for the stubborn pride of General Gordon, who had been sent to the Sudan charged with a commission to withdraw the British from the Egyptian garrisons of Suakin, Berber and Khartoum. Instead, on arriving at Khartoum, he had decided that its fall would inevitably lead to a widespread revolt and the eventual control of the whole of the Sudan by the Mahdi.

Fearing nothing, and convinced that he was an instrument in the hands of God, he had decided to hold Khartoum. After coming to this decision, he wrote cheerfully in his Journal: “I own to having been very insubordinate to Her Majesty’s Government and its officials, but it is my nature, and I cannot help it. I know if I was chief I would never employ myself, for I am incorrigible.” The possible fate of those under his care apparently did not seem to have worried him unduly.

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This edited article about motor racing originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 704 published on 12 July 1975.

There were many casualties in the Paris to Madrid road race of 1903, by Graham Coton

As His car crossed the finishing line at Bordeaux at the end of the first stage of the 1903 Paris to Madrid road race, racing driver Louis Renault slumped unconscious over the steering wheel, shocked by a massacre he had just driven through.

Fernand, his brother, dragged him white-faced from the cockpit, and heard Louis blurt out a disjointed account of the carnage he had witnessed.

He told of the chaos that reigned on the road behind him after the fast cars had crashed on 16th century humpbacked bridges or broke their axles on bumps in the road that were all right for a dog cart but calamitous for a car.

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This edited article about the Duchess of Bedford originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 703 published on 5 July 1975.

A picture history of Woburn Abbey, home of the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, showing the flying Duchess, (bottom, right of centre)

Supposing your grandmother, or the grandmother of one of your friends, suddenly announced that she was going to learn to fly.

Think of the surprise and the raised eyebrows, and the exclamations of “Grandma, don’t be so silly” there would be. Much as we take airplanes for granted nowadays very few of us, let alone elderly ladies, ever learn to be pilots.

So you can imagine what a fuss there was nearly fifty years ago when, at the age of sixty, the Duchess of Bedford, grandmother of the present Duke of Bedford, took up flying. And the even greater fuss there was some years later when she took off in her de Havilland Gypsy plane one day, disappeared, and was never seen again.

Back in the 1920s, airplanes were not the smooth-travelling, streamlined affairs that they are today. Flying them was still an adventure. It was the age of pilots who set off across the world in tiny planes with cans of extra petrol stacked behind them, and little more than hope in their hearts and determination in their minds, to guarantee that they would land safely somewhere on the other side – in India, in Australia, in America.

It was the age of the pioneers and the trailblazers. Colonel Lindbergh became one of the world’s heroes by making the first solo flight across the Atlantic from New York to Paris in 1927; Amy Johnson was the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia in 1930.

Flights like these helped to pave the way for the airliners of the future. The men and women who made them were dedicated to flying, to proving that there was no part of the world which could not be reached by air.

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This edited article about Captain Reeks of the Stella originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 702 published on 28 June 1975.

The sinking of the steamer, Stella, in 1899

A passenger staggered along the heaving deck of the steamer Stella as it bucked and rolled through the waves. He found the captain at the foot of the ladder leading to the bridge.

“The fog is getting much thicker and we don’t seem to be slackening speed, captain,” said the passenger. “Is that quite the safe thing to do?”

The captain frowned. “I think you can leave matters of safety to me, sir,” he replied heavily. “When I think it is right to reduce speed, I shall do so and not before.”

With that, the skipper, Captain Charles Reeks, continued on his way to the bridge. He bitterly resented criticism of his rivalry with the skipper of another steamer, the Ibex, which shuttled between Southampton and Guernsey, the second largest of the Channel Islands.

Each aimed to make the faster trip to Guernsey and so please the holidaymakers from London and the south-east.

For some time, however, the Ibex had been docking at St. Peter Port, the island’s capital first. Sometimes, she was only a few minutes ahead of the Stella. On other occasions, she was as much as twelve hours in the lead.

This rivalry reached its peak at the Easter holiday of 1899. The Ibex had left Southampton fifteen minutes ahead of its rival. Captain Reeks was determined that the Stella would catch up the other ship and pass it, whatever the cost.

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This edited article about Alfred Nobel originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 701 published on 21 June 1975.

Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921

The uneasy conscience of a Swedish scientist, who slowly realised that his life’s work would create destruction and misery, led to the foundation of awards dedicated to the search for peace and the happiness of mankind.

All his life, Alfred Bernhard Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, had investigated the chemical properties that released enormous waves of energy when detonated. His ambition was to make them safe to handle and he visualised his discoveries being used in peaceful pursuits such as blasting out harbours, clearing mines and demolition work of all kinds.

Maybe he was naive or perhaps he never found the time to contemplate the awfulness that his work might one day produce. And it seemed he never realised how much money he was making. His work encompassed his horizons completely.

Alfred Nobel, who was born in Stockholm on October 21, 1833, was brought up in his father’s inventive aura. Emmanuel Nobel was a manufacturer of nitroglycerin and he had a genius for invention but it was not reinforced by training or education. The creative instinct was not restrained by the caution that comes from learning, with the result that many accidents occurred with his experiments with explosives.

Emmanuel went to Russia where he made steamships and underwater explosives for the government. The rest of the Nobel family joined him in St. Petersburg – now Leningrad – in 1842.

Alfred Nobel spent only two terms in school and then tutors were brought in to help him study to become an engineer. He never went to university. But by his 16th birthday, he was a competent chemist and fluent in French, German and Russian with enough knowledge of English to write poetry in the language.

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This edited article about the Gunfight at the OK Corral originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 700 published on 14 June 1975.

Wyatt Earp at the so-called Battle at the OK Corral

It was unusually cold for October. Cold enough for the low range of mountains which overlooked the small Arizona mining town of Tombstone to be white with snow. Cold enough for the four tall men walking so determinedly down Fremont Street to be wearing thick overcoats over their dark, three-piece suits.

An onlooker would have found it difficult to distinguish between these four men in their heavy overcoats. They were all fair-haired, all wore moustaches and all wore flat, wide-brimmed hats.

But the observant would have noted that one man, a little less tall than the others and of slighter build, wore a grey coat while the others wore black – and that he was wearing it like a cloak.

The reason for this was known only to the four men. Underneath the grey overcoat, the man was holding a double-barrelled shotgun!

The four men, walking at a measured pace, passed the alleyway leading to the back entrance to the O.K. Corral, on past Bauer’s butcher shop, and then turned left into the vacant lot between Fly’s Photograph Gallery and the assay office. In the vacant lot were five men dressed in the I attire of working cowboys.

A few words were exchanged, then there was the sudden roar of six-shooters and the savage blast of a shotgun firing both barrels.

When the smoke cleared, less than thirty seconds later, three of the cowboys lay dead.

This was the grim encounter which has become celebrated as the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

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This edited article about Mississippi steamboats originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 700 published on 14 June 1975.

The Robert E. Lee and behind it, the Natchez, rival riverboats in the great Mississippi boat race

Everyone agreed that it was going to be the race of the century. After years of rivalry, the captains of the river steamers Robert E. Lee and Natchez were going to fight it out over the 1,218 miles of the Mississippi River that lay between New Orleans, Louisiana’s biggest city, and distant St. Louis.

It had all the makings of an epic contest, because both men and vessels were well matched. John W. Cannon was captain and owner of the Robert E. Lee, a steamer 285 feet (86 metres) long, 48 feet (14 metres) wide and with a draught of only nine feet (2.7 metres). The Lee was driven by paddle wheels 38 feet (11.5 metres) in diameter and powered by steam generated in eight boilers.

Rivalling it was the 303 feet (92 metres) long Natchez, with paddle wheels almost 43 feet (13 metres) across, commanded by Captain Thomas P. Leathers.

The date was 30th June, 1870, and it was soon to be decided which of these two vessels would reach St. Louis first in a straight race.

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This edited article about Randolph Hearst originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 700 published on 14 June 1975.

THE CLEANSING OF NEW YORK. The long arm of the law holds Joseph Pulitzer and Randolph Hearst by their collars above the skyline of New York, by Louis Dalrymple

The Hollywood guests assembled in the great hall. Gaudy Spanish banners hung 22 feet above them from a ceiling that once graced a palace in Brescia. Suits of armour stood in grim parade around the oak walls. A long table edged with medieval chairs beckoned with sparkling, cut glass and glinting candelabra.

The amiable chatter ceased. In the expectant hush on the stroke of 7.30 p.m., their host appeared, stepping through a panel set in a 16th century choir stall. A big, dominating man with hard features exuding the power that only millions can provide: William Randolph Hearst, newspaper tycoon, master of the sensational smear campaign, the Press king who revolutionised journalism with blaring banner headlines in black, red and even emerald green ink, the “Lord of San Simeon” – the fortified Spanish-style castle that he had carved out of solid rock, 200 miles from Los Angeles.

It was there that Hearst loved to entertain Hollywood stars, directors and producers on a scale that a Roman Emperor would have envied. They could hunt buffalo on its 240,000 acres, in area bigger than Bedfordshire, fish, send falcons after their prey or swim in the castle pool inlaid with gold. They arrived either by air, touching down on San Simeon’s airstrip, or by train over Hearst’s private railway.

He imposed only two rules on his visitors: they had to gather in the 100-foot long great hall for his staged entry every night and the word “death” must never be uttered in his presence.

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This edited article about Amelia Earhart originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 699 published on 7 June 1975.

Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra

Amelia Earhart looked down anxiously from the cockpit of her single-engined Lockheed Vega aircraft as it laboured its way over the Atlantic Ocean. She was just four hours out from Harbour Grace in Newfoundland in her attempt to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, and now flames and smoke were billowing out beneath the fuselage.

The exhaust manifold had broken. Amelia put the plane into a steep climb. Then the altimeter failed, and ice began to form on the wings. The engine coughed and spluttered and started running rough.

It was dark and above the acrid smell of the flames and smoke that licked out from beneath her, Amelia smelt petrol. Sure enough, the petrol gauge was leaking. One stray spark now would be enough to turn the tiny aircraft into a ball of fire.

Yet, despite these setbacks, Amelia touched down safely in a field near Londonderry, Northern Ireland, fourteen hours after taking off from Newfoundland. It was a remarkable achievement and It made her, In that year of 1932, the darling of the flying world.

Throughout Europe and America, the name of this Kansas-born woman, the wife of an American publisher called George P. Putnam, was blazed across newspaper front pages.

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This edited article about Chicago originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 698 published on 31 May 1975.

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 by Neville Dear

Mrs. O’Leary was milking her cow in the barn. The cow kicked over an oil lamp and set light to a pile of tinder-dry hay. And that began the great Chicago fire of 1871.

Well, that is what many people believed. Others thought that some lunatic fire-raiser began it all.

Whatever the truth about the beginning, the sequel was staggering in its immensity.

By the evening of October 10, less than forty-eight hours later, 1,900 acres of Chicago was a smoke-wreathed, smouldering scar upon the land of Illinois.

The flames had devoured some 13,000 buildings, among them 1,600 shops with some of the finest merchandise in the world upon their counters, some sixty churches and 600 factories.

Over 2,000 street lamps were so badly damaged that they had to be replaced. More than 122 miles of pavement was destroyed.

In all, almost £100 million worth of damage was done. And 100,000 people were made homeless.

But if nobody actually knew how the fire started, why was it allowed to spread at such a rate? Why did nobody realize that Chicago in 1871 was like a bonfire waiting to be lit?

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