This edited article about Jacques LeBaudy originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 260 published on 7 January 1967.

Berbers on horseback around the time LeBaudy established his empire

From the age of six, Jacques LeBaudy knew exactly what he wanted. He put it into words when his father asked him what he would like for Christmas.

“A throne!” replied the little boy. And to have an empire of his very own was an obsession which remained with him for the rest of his life.

Jacques’s father became a millionaire in the sugar business, and at the age of 24, Jacques inherited his vast fortune. Now that he was one of the richest men in France, he secretly planned to achieve his childhood ambition.

He boarded his yacht Fransquita with 200 men whom he had secretly hired in Paris. Most of them were ex-soldiers, but there was also a sprinkling of men from the underworld. The senior man was an ex-American bank-robber.

As well as being overloaded with passengers, the luxury yacht had a strange cargo; it included 16 cannon, a printing press, a guillotine – and a throne.

The voyage ended at the West African coast. As land came in sight, LeBaudy assembled his men.

“We have come to set up the Saharan Empire of LeBaudy,” he announced.

He went on to explain how he had employed geographical experts to find him a part of the world which did not belong to an existing Power. These experts had discovered that there was a huge ‘no-man’s-land’ in the Sahara, stretching 150 miles from Cape Juby to Cape Bojador. Inland it covered hundreds of square miles, being situated between the frontiers of Morocco and the Spanish colony of Rio de Oro. This vast piece of desert was to be the new ‘Empire’.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about the Siege of Paris originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 234 published on 9 July 1966.

Rolier and Bezier flew a balloon to carry urgent dispatches for assistance during the German Siege of Paris

“The wind’s wrong,” protested Rolier.

But those around Rolier that midday on November 24th, 1870, were not balloonists and did not understand. “Jump aboard,” they said impatiently. Then, throwing him a package of vital dispatches, they said: “Here, catch hold of this.”

France was in the last stages of a disastrous war with Germany, and Paris was ringed by the steel bayonets of German troops. Only by balloon or carrier pigeon could letters and dispatches be sent to garrisons in other cities.

Officials almost pushed Rolier into the passenger basket of the balloon. Desperately he held up his hand. “Feel the wind,” he begged them. “This dispatch is for Monsieur Gambetta, head of the Provisional Government at Tours. Gentlemen, you must understand. Tours is 150 miles to the south-west of Paris, but the wind is blowing from the south-west. A balloon has no engine. What do you expect me to do – flap my arms like the wings of a bird?”

But the men around the basket still took no notice. They even bundled a passenger aboard. “This is Monsieur Bezier. He is to go with you.” Then flushed with the success of previous balloon flights which had taken thousands of letters out of Paris, they released the ropes which secured the balloon to the ground. Up it rose, swiftly, with the basket swaying in the swift currents of air above the city.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Blondin originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 231 published on 18 June 1966.

Blondin (Francois Gravelet) pushes a wheelbarrow across a tightrope over Niagra Falls

On June 30, 1859, about 25,000 people were staring up at a rope stretched across Niagara Falls. The rope was over a thousand feet long and a hundred and sixty feet above the roaring tumult of the river.

Suddenly the crowd froze with excitement. A man had started to walk along the rope from the American side. Half-way across, he lay down; then he proceeded to do a backwards somersault. He reached the far side and, as the cheers rang out, a band struck up the Marseillaise.

The tightrope walker started back to the American side carrying a chair. When he reached the middle of the rope, he balanced the chair on two legs and sat down on it.

The performer’s name was Blondin, and he was the greatest of all rope-walkers.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Wind Wagon Thomas originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 224 published on 30 April 1966.

American frontier history is filled with daring tales of rugged pioneers who trekked across the Old Santa Fe Trail in search of new wealth, excitement and adventure.

But one of the strangest trail-blazers of them all was a man called “Windwagon” Thomas. He dreamed up a fantastic invention which almost changed the history of this one-thousand-mile-long, treacherous prairie trail linking the East with the Far West.

On a sunny spring afternoon in 1853, Thomas turned up, quite unexpectedly in the frontier town of Westport, Missouri. Westport was a main jumping-off spot for travellers planning to cross the vast prairie along the Santa Fé Trail. Here a man could obtain arms, ammunition, clothing, wagons, oxen or mules, and provisions for the crossing.

The Trail had become an international trade route. Eastern merchants would boldly set off westwards with goods they planned to sell in New Mexico. Other travellers were returning from the West, their creaking wagons loaded to overflowing with Mexican silver and gold bullion, costly buffalo robes and beaver skins.

“Windwagon’s” sudden arrival in Westport caused a tremendous stir. Horses bolted in panic, settlers’ wives scurried home, mules nervously pricked up their ears, dogs ran, their tails curled apprehensively under their legs, while hardened frontiersmen watched in stunned disbelief.

“Windwagon” came sailing into town, careering along the muddy streets on a unique wind-driven wagon, fitted with wheels and bearing a fluttering white sail!

Screeching to a halt, he stepped out of his contraption and made his way over to the local saloon. The leading townsfolk soon joined him, their excitement growing into curiosity.

“Windwagon” nodded in a friendly way. “You haven’t seen anything yet,” he said. “Why, this here craft is just a small model of what I really intend to build.”

“Windwagon” Thomas quickly explained his fantastic idea. He wanted to construct a massive fleet of giant prairie schooners, all operating on wind-power, which could sail along the Santa Fe Trail. All he needed to build the first large schooner of this type, was money.

The people of Westport eyed him with scepticism. “It’s a crazy idea,” one of them growled out.

But “Windwagon,” who talked like a sailor, and who claimed he had come from the East, did not give up easily. He sternly reminded the townspeople of the hardships involved in making the crossing with conventional Conestoga Wagons. It was a slow, tedious trip, and the travellers were liable to attacks by Indians, prairie bandits and Texan Raiders.

The people of Westport nodded in agreement, and “Windwagon” went on, his voice filling with confidence, “With the wind-powered craft I can build, you have the advantage of top speed. You save the cost of a team of animals. And Indians would be afraid to attack. There’s plenty of wind on the prairie . . . so why not make use of it!”

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about World War One originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 194 published on 2 October 1965.

As the dog began scratching at the door, Trooper Fowler’s protectors wondered whether the Germans would grow suspicious

Among the grim relics in London’s Imperial War Museum stands an object which seems completely out of place. It is a plain wooden cupboard.

Not very grim – or exciting? Yet this cupboard figured in one of the most amazing stories of the first World War.

It was in 1914, at the terrible battle of Le Cateau in France, that Trooper Patrick Fowler, of the 11th Hussars, had his horse shot from under him. Cut off from his regiment, he lived for several weeks in the woods. Often he had to lie low when German patrols came near, and he had no idea of how the war was progressing. He was nearly dying of starvation when a woodcutter found him and took him at night to the home of his widowed mother-in-law in the village of Bertry, well behind the German lines.

Recalling the adventure for me many years later, Patrick Fowler said: “After the good people had fed me, the problem was to find a hiding-place. Suddenly the widow’s daughter had a brainwave – the cupboard.”

It was less than six feet high, and was divided into two sections, each with a door. One section was fitted with shelves, and the other had pegs for clothes.

“Little did I think as I squeezed into it that it would be my home for nearly four years,” Fowler said. He went on to describe how he sat in the section which was used as a wardrobe, with his chin resting on his knees. “I thought that in a few days I should be well enough to escape, but I did not get a chance. Not knowing French was only one of the things against me – and soon eight German soldiers were billeted in the house.”

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about William Marsters originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 192 published on 18 September 1965.

A cabin in the suburbs of nearby Tahiti whither many Marsters migrated

When he was a boy, William Marsters had a dream. It was a dream about running away to sea, finding an uninhabited tropical island, and setting up his own private kingdom.

His parents laughed at what they thought was a boyish fancy, but, as William grew up on his father’s farm near Birmingham, the desire for this adventure grew stronger and stronger. Then, at the age of twenty-one, he decided he had had enough of ploughing, and went to Bristol. Here he signed on a Pacific-bound sailing ship.

At Suvorov, in the Cook Islands, he deserted the ship.

The young English sailor soon got a job with a Tahitian trader, who wanted him to go to an uninhabited island where he would organize a team of natives collecting beche-de-mer. This is a large sea slug which, when dried, is considered a delicacy at Chinese tables.

Overjoyed at the thought of living on such an island, William was put ashore on a low-lying atoll. The captain of the trading schooner told him to make preparations, and that the schooner would soon return with his workers.

The weeks went by. Life on the atoll was pleasant. The lagoon supplied all the fish William needed for food, the soil was fertile, and there was plenty of fresh water. William realized he had found the island of his dreams – and that he was marooned on it!

For some unknown reason, the schooner did not return, and William was in the same plight as Robinson Crusoe. After six years another ship rescued him and took him back to Tahiti, where he was able to claim six years’ back pay. Soon he fell in love with a good-looking Island girl called Esther. The couple were married by a missionary, and William decided to settle down with his bride on the atoll where he had been a castaway.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about World War One originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 154 published on 26 December 1964.

The Christmas Day Armistice on parts of the Western Front in 1914, by Pat Nicolle

Suddenly it was Christmas . . . and suddenly the great guns that had pounded out death and destruction in the first four cruel months of the worst war mankind had experienced were quiet.

As the weak sun rose over the battle-scarred fields of France it was literally all quiet on the western front.

The year was 1914 – exactly fifty years ago this Christmas. All that happened on that day is still not transparently clear. But many veterans remember that on the British side, junior officers, N.C.O.s and private soldiers climbed out of their trenches unarmed, walked across No Man’s Land – the strip of land between the opposing armies – and took presents to their opposite numbers in the German trenches.

And when they came back they brought with them gifts received from the Germans.

This astonishing incident was repeated in several places along the lines. Some British troops even went into the German trenches to eat their Christmas dinners with the enemy, and German troops did the same in the British trenches.

Two reports declared that football matches were played with the enemy – one by the Buffs, a Kent infantry regiment, and the other by the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

When this information reached General Headquarters, Sir John French, British Commander in the Field, was horrified. Officers were reprimanded and strict instructions issued to prevent a repetition.

Afterwards French wrote, “I called the local commanders to strict account, which resulted in a good deal of trouble.”

When the Commander’s orders reached the front lines the guns opened fire once more. The Christmas Day Armistice was never repeated.

This edited article about the War of Jenkins’ Ear originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 105 published on 18 January 1964.

The Spanish coastguard captain lunged at Captain Jenkins before cutting off that famous ear which would lead to the War of Jenkins’ Ear

There surely cannot be a better known ear in the history of human activity than the one that Jenkins had and lost.

The ear which a Spanish coastguard cut off the head of Captain Robert Jenkins; the same ear that the same Jenkins picked up, pickled in a bottle, and presented to a Parliamentary Committee as evidence of his ill-treatment at the hands of the dastardly Spanish.

The ear which, indeed, caused a full-scale war between the world’s two greatest nations at the time.

Before considering the case of Jenkins’ ear, however, let us look at some of the things that were happening in the first half of the eighteenth century when Captain Jenkins was commanding his brig Rebecca, running between England and Jamaica.

The Treaty of Utrecht, signed in 1713, had ended a war involving England, France, Spain and Austria, and by its terms England had gained certain trading rights with the Spanish colonies in the West Indies. But greed and ruthlessness on the part of both England and Spain soon put the terms of the treaty into contempt; first one side exceeded its rights, then the other took reprisals, and by 1730 the treaty had broken down.

By that year, too, Spanish coastguards were habitually boarding British ships and searching them for smuggled cargoes (which they often found), to the great but rather hypocritical indignation of the entire British merchant navy and the entire British Parliament. And in the following year a Spanish coastguard captain and his men boarded Captain Jenkins’ Rebecca off Havana in Cuba.

Apparently there was an argument below deck, during which the Spanish coastguard captain sliced off the English captain’s immortal ear and handed it to him with the words: “Take that to your King and tell him that if he were here I would do the same to him.”

The aggrieved Jenkins put his ear in some pickling fluid in a bottle and sailed home to England with it. Then, true to the coastguard’s bidding, he took it to King George II.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about the platypus originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 103 published on 4th January, 1964.

Platypus swimming

The platypus, which is native only to Tasmania and Eastern Australia, is nature’s joke on the animal kingdom.

It has thick, close, brown, velvety fur like that of a mole, webbed feet, a duck bill, and it is equally at home on land as in the water. But the most amazing thing about this fantastic creature is that the female platypus lays eggs, and when the young are hatched their mother suckles or feeds them like a mammal.

The zoologist’s name for the platypus is ornithorhynchus and comes from two Greek words: ornithos, bird, and hynchus, a bill. Its popular name of “platypus” also comes from the Greek words: platys, meaning broad; and pous, meaning foot. This is because of the animal’s large, paddle-like feet.

A fully grown platypus is about a foot long, not including its tail and bill. The bill is not only used for collecting the snails, insects, worms and crayfish on which it feeds – it is also the animal’s eyes, nose and ears.

Although the platypus has eyes, they are very small and their sight is bad. When it swims under the water it always keeps them closed.

Read the rest of this article »

Six months ago we thought it would be interesting to make a collection of postcards sent in 1913, the reasoning, of course, being that 1913 was the year before the world fell to pieces and so images from that year have a peculiar poignancy.

We looked through not less than 70,000 postcards, and bought 300.  These we have further refined down to 100 which we think best summarise, albeit idiosyncratically, the end of an era.

To see a picture show of these 100 postcards sent in 1913, click here.

The images are available for commercial licensing through the Bridgeman Art Library.