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

The duck-billed platypus

Australians are often referred to as “diggers” and in the case of the Duck-billed platypus, it is an apt description. The female platypus digs a nursery burrow into the bank of a stream. The tunnel entrance is sometimes below water level. A spacious chamber equipped with an air shaft is lined with leaves from the gum tree and some dried grass. This then is the home of one of the strangest animals in the world.

The scientific name of our odd little digger is Ornithorhynchus from the words Ornis meaning bird and rhynchos meaning snout. But as well as the snout being equipped with a beak or bill, the female lays eggs (usually two in a single annual clutch). These are soft-shelled and about the size of a pigeon’s egg. When hatched, the helpless young are fed on milk secreted from the teetless mammary glands of the mother. After four months underground, the young begin to take on the appearance of the adults and come out from the nursery to see their first daylight. The observer then may get a chance to see how odd these creatures are. A beak like a duck, fur like an otter, tail like a beaver, large webbed feet and all this on top of laying eggs and feeding the young on milk make it a unique animal. The male is very dangerous for he is equipped with poison spurs. On each hind foot is a hollow spike that can be a very dangerous weapon. It is similar to the fang of a snake and can inflict quite a serious wound.

Even at mating time, these amusing-looking creatures show little affection for each other. But they do like company. So after the breeding season is over, they live together coming out at dawn or dusk or during an overcast day. They feed on worms, snails and other small aquatic creatures. But before the full light of day, they return to that Australian bankside home.

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

The wombat

Often referred to as the “Badger” in his native Australia, the common or naked nosed Wombat is a most proficient digger. He sometimes digs a tunnel 100 feet (30 metres) long, leading to the den or inside the chamber where he spends the daylight hours. The usual tunnel is however much shorter, about 15 feet (4.5 metres) long, dug out with the stout claws wielded by study limbs that make him a digging champion.

The amiable Wombat is a vegetarian and comes up at night to feed on grasses and roots and the inner bark of trees. It seems to do him good, for he is very long-lived, and tame Wombats have been kept in captivity for 30 years.

The Wombat is a marsupial which means that the female carries the single offspring in a pouch. The pouch opens backwards to avoid becoming filled with soil while burrowing.

Wombats have been persecuted and are now much reduced in range than in earlier years. Hunters, farmers, and introduced species of animals all have taken a toll. Although they are now restricted to the forested hills of South-East Australia, their future would appear to be fairly secure. The solitary habits of the common Wombat are different from those of his relation, the Hairy Nosed Wombat. This type lives in the dry, grassy plains of the interior and lives in large colonies. The range of the Hairy Nosed Wombat is reducing rapidly but some colonies are protected. So future generations may yet see the Wombat as they come out to feed from their underground dens.

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. Read the rest of this article »

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

Some motor-cycle stunts are more spectacular than others

Captain Tony Scarisbrick is a man with an iron nerve. He needed this courage on 4th June, 1971, when he volunteered to be the forty-first man in a line of closely packed soldiers at a Royal Artillery motorcycle display at Woolwich, London.

Scarisbrick lay there unflinching as a motorcycle ridden by Sergeant Major Thomas Gledhill roared up a ramp at the end of a line of prone volunteers. As Gledhill reached the summit of the ramp, his 441 c.c. B.S.A. Victor Machine took off like a snarling beast. Would Gledhill have the power at his command to clear the men beneath him? Or would he crash upon them with disastrous results?

The watching crowds knew who was the most likely victim of an accident. It was Scarisbrick, calmly confident that Gledhill’s skill would enable him to rise to his feet unscathed at the end of the feat.

This confidence was fully justified. Gledhill cleared the 41 men successfully in a most spectacular leap on his machine which no man has yet been able to surpass.

This edited article about protecting and conserving Britain’s heritage originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

Londinium as the Romans built it, by Ralph Bruce

The occupant of an earth-satellite poised in space over Britain at the right altitude, would be able to see almost at a glance, if he knew what to look out for, evidence of man’s existence here during more than 5,000 years. This would be the record of his way of life, at first agricultural and then industrial, from the time when he originally established himself and laid his ‘signature’ upon the land. From Muckle Flugga at the tip of Shetland to the granite crags of Land’s End, history and prehistory would be spread out beneath his gaze. This is what we call our heritage.

His eye would be caught by the greatest prehistoric monument within our shores, Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, the masterpiece of Stone Age Man which may have taken 1,000 years to build and was completed perhaps 3,500 years ago. Its true purpose is still not known. Not far from it, he would see the Avebury Stone Circle, the largest of its kind in all Europe, and the avenue of giant stones leading to Silbury Hill, the largest man-made mound in Europe. He would see, too, the hundreds of round and oval burial-mounds, especially in Wiltshire, marking the last resting-places of chieftains who died over 3,000 years ago.

All these are impressive relics of Stone Age and Bronze Age Man, the earliest inhabitants of Britain. The hills and ridges of Berkshire, Dorset, Derbyshire and elsewhere carry the relics of their successors. These are the great earth ramparts and ditches of the hill-forts established by Iron Age Man. They may be seen from the air, but you can see and explore them on foot. All are prehistoric sites. All were there when, in the last years B.C., the Romans arrived in Britain. Read the rest of this article »

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

The famous World War Two spy, Violette Szabo, was trapped by an advance guard of the German army

The cinema and the spy thriller have given us a highly coloured picture of the secret agent at work. Armed with a veritable arsenal of fancy equipment, ranging from cameras in cigarette lighters to seemingly innocuous items which turn out to be something capable of blowing up a building, the secret agent of fiction wanders around the world, gaily taking everything in his stride. The truth is something rather different.

The secret agent, which is really a more polite term for a spy, has been with us for a long, long time, and for most of that time his work has been lonely and boring. But, of course, it was still not without its dangers, as we will show you in this new series.

Espionage, in war and in peace, is almost as old as man himself. Certainly it began much earlier than the times of the Old Testament in which it is recorded that Moses sent 12 spies into the land of Canaan. Four thousand years ago, the Egypt of the Pharaohs had a highly sophisticated espionage network in its conquered territories. And espionage has never lacked for its practitioners at any time in history, even though, when caught, the spy can always be certain of two things – that he will be disowned by his masters and that he will be imprisoned or executed.

Probably the most illustrious of all ancient spies was Mithridates, who became king of Pontus in Asia Minor when he was, only 11 years old. Later, he fled from his tempestuous mother and in his wanderings he was said to have learned 25 languages and made a special study of poisons. These attributes Mithridates turned to good account as a spy, a career he pursued while disguised as a caravan boy. He soon learned so much about the strength of tribes in Asia Minor that he was able to vanquish his mother and get back his throne, where he ruled as one of the greatest tyrants of all time.

The ancient Romans had a highly developed espionage service, although their methods were sometimes strangely crude. When a Roman delegation went to the camp of Syphax, king of Numidia, to arrange a peace treaty, the whole delegation were high ranking military spies. Only their leader, Lelius, wore uniform; all the rest were disguised as slaves.

To get information about the strength of the Numidian army, Lelius simply contrived to make one of the Roman horses break away from the delegation’s camp. The slaves then chased the animal through the Numidian army lines, making careful mental note of all they saw.

But one day, a Numidian army officer stopped one of the Roman “slaves” and declared that he had seen him before, in an officers’ training school in Greece, and that he was sure the slave was in fact a Roman officer.

At this, Lelius stepped forward and viciously slashed the “slave” with his horsewhip. The Numidian officer knew that, according to Roman law, it was forbidden under pain of death to strike a Roman officer. What would the “slave” do? Time and time again, Lelius lashed the man until, like a cringing animal, the “slave” crept away. The Numidian was then satisfied: the man could not be an officer or Lelius would never have struck him.

As old as the spy’s profession is his bag of tricks, repeated and permutated down all the centuries, but never losing its fascination. In the Franco-German War of 1870-1, spies disguised as priests walked out of Paris while it was under siege and found their way unmolested into the German lines. In the war between France and Austria in 1813, cryptic writing, which aims at disguising important information with harmless phrases, was widely used. Thus, “Your brother has recovered from his illness and is now in good health” meant, “The Austrian army is mobilised and ready to march.”

One of the papers found in the Austrian army headquarters after that war was the following “business” letter written by a spy from Trieste. Although the “business” seems harmless, the recipient’s knowledge of what the code meant gave the letter a new and vital significance:

“Dear Sir,

“I hope that you are already in receipt of my last letter. I arrived at 5 a.m. today in Trieste to look for the goods that you are particularly anxious to obtain here.

“I have secured the following.

1 cwt, of cinnamon (a fortress)

2 cases of lemons, average size (guns)

60 ditto, smaller size

“These are being stored meantime not far from the shore.

Within the next few days you may expect to receive the following:

4 cases of bitter oranges (earthworks)

2 casks of eels (magazines)

400 sacks of rice (hundredweights of powder)

450 sacks of almonds (light infantry)

1 small cask of figs (brigadier)

1 small cask of pure oil (lieutenant-general)

“For all these articles I have paid a deposit of 1,700 lire (infantry), debiting the amount to your account. Trusting this meets with your entire satisfaction and may prove extremely profitable to you . . .”

Sending such information by post was nothing new. In ancient times, when the “post” was simply a slave courier, the Persians inscribed their secret messages on clay tablets, then covered the tablets with wax, so that the words could not be seen. Then, if the courier was caught, he appeared to be carrying only a blank tablet.

Another favourite spy trick, used as late as the Second World War, was to insert cipher information in the personal advertisement columns of newspapers. When the Germans bombed Paris in the First World War, for instance, their intelligence service in Switzerland eagerly scanned the columns of a well-known French newspaper for days afterwards, until they saw an advertisement that read something like:

“19-22. Bien arrivee avec nos trois amis, mere malade. 3,160.”

The advertisement, placed by a spy, meant:

“Nineteenth district of Paris, Square No. 22 on the military map, bomb hit, three victims, tremendous effect on the population. Sent by agent number 3,160.”

On the French and Belgian battlefields in the First World War, windmills were a favourite means of communication for spies. Once, a Russian spy decided to make use of a windmill just in front of the Russian lines.

For an hour he pleaded with the miller and his wife, with a bribe of fifty roubles, to help the Allied cause by turning the arms of the windmill in a clockwise direction as a signal to the Russians if the Germans should arrive.

When the miller adamantly refused to have anything to do with such an idea, the spy stripped three of the sails, bound the miller’s wife hand and foot; then tied the helpless miller to the remaining sail of the windmill, which he turned upwards.

The spy’s plan, of course, was that if the Germans did arrive they would certainly release the miller by bringing him down to earth. As soon as they did that, one of the stripped sails would go upwards, signalling to the Russians that they were there. That, in fact, was exactly what did happen. As soon as the Germans made to release the miller, the Russians raked the mill with artillery fire, wiping out the enemy.

Today, with most of the world in an uneasy state of peace, there is still plenty of work for spies. The peacetime spy is an industrial spy, whose job is to steal one company’s secrets and sell them to others – or to use them for himself. During the years of the industrial revolution a British ironmaster and industrial spy named Foley played the part of a wandering minstrel by tramping from town to town in Europe with his violin. His real aim was to find out how the Continental method of treating iron and producing steel worked, for it was considered superior to the British method. Returning to England with his secret, “Fiddler” Foley developed his factory at Stourbridge in Worcestershire and became a millionaire.

“Bugs”, or listening devices, are the chief tools of the modern industrial spy. A bug invented by Emanuel Mittleman, of New York, can be planted in the base of the victim’s telephone, and the spy can then eavesdrop from anywhere.

What happens is that the spy dials the number of the bugged telephone and the moment before the telephone rings he blows a single special note with a tiny mouth organ that comes with the bug. The mouth organ note activates the microphone in the base of the telephone at the other end. Two things then happen – the telephone does not ring and the spy is able to hear every word in the room, even though the bugged telephone is still on the hook.

Followers of James Bond and other modern espionage heroes know how important is the miniature camera in the spy’s toolkit. The one most used is, strange to say, one that is on sale to the public – the German Minox miniature camera.

The Minox is only three inches long by an inch wide and weighs only four ounces when fully loaded. It can take sharp pictures down to a range of eight-inches, and with 36 pictures on a single film, it is the perfect instrument for photographing the enemy’s secret documents at close range.

The twelve spies who went into the land of Canaan for Moses had only their eyes with which to record information. Three and a half thousand years later the tools are different – but the basic job is still the same.

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

Diver and sharks filmed underwater

Fright paralysed Lotte Hass. For a moment, she hung suspended in the warm tropical waters, staring in disbelief at the amazing creature which was swimming towards her.

It was like nothing she had ever seen before, for it is not everyone’s lot to come face to face with a manta ray. And this one had huge flippers which gave it a wingspan of over fifteen feet. Its features were frighteningly equipped with two large lobes which it used to shovel food into its mouth.

Lotte felt particularly defenceless in her skin-diving suit and face mask because all she had for her protection was a harpoon.

But she had been asked to swim close to the creature for a film about underwater life being made by her husband, Hans Hass, whose films have been shown on television in Britain. He had assured her that the manta ate nothing but tiny marine creatures called plankton, and had no teeth at all. Read the rest of this article »

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

Robert Burns from the painting by Alexander Naismith

The most famous and best loved of Scotland’s poets was born on January 25th 1759, inside the cottage at Alloway in Ayrshire which his father had built with his own hands.

It was here that Robert Burns spent the first seven years of his life as the son of a farmer. At the age of 15 young Burns had learnt enough about farming to enable him to become a skilled ploughman, but though he once wrote of himself: “I have not the most distant pretensions to being . . . a Gentleman. I am simply Robert Burns, at your service. I was born at the Plough”, it is not true to say, as many have claimed in the past, that he was an uneducated illiterate who suddenly began to write poems without any knowledge of literature. Burns received careful instruction from his father and from his schoolmaster and, as a child, would take poetry books with him into the fields to read. From his mother he gained a wealth of traditional ballads and folk tales which was to help inspire some of his best poetry and at 16 young Burns wrote his first song, ‘Handsome Nell’.

His early love poems and country verses were published in 1786, making him the toast of Edinburgh at 28.

In 1791 he decided to become an exciseman at Dumfries and in his spare time carried out a most important literary task which many believe to be his finest achievement. This was the provision of songs for the Scots Musical Museum and Select Collection of Original Scottish airs. At this time also, he wrote in one day what is considered to be the greatest of his longer poems, ‘Tam O’Shanter’.

Then, in 1796, Burns found that he had to pay the final penalty for his intemperate drinking habits. On July 21st, 1796, Scotland’s finest poet died, at the tragically early age of 37.

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

The Long Gallery at Castle Ashby with its early Palladian design. Photograph by Charles Latham

Castle Ashby is a sight worth seeing. It lies in a great landscape park built by the noted landscape gardener, Lancelot Brown, better known as “Capability” Brown. He received his nickname from his favourite saying that a site had “capabilities.”

Although the park was laid out in 1765, the bulk of this quadrangular mansion is regional Jacobean and dates from approximately 1624. An unusual aspect of the building is that it presents the most complete example of a balustrade spelling out an inscription. In this case, it is the verse Nisi Dominus.

The side containing the entrance to the courtyard was built in the style of Inigo Jones, but the date and designer are unknown.

The Great Chamber with Elizabethan and Charles II features, has a ceiling typifying the transition in style from the Jacobean to the Palladian vogue of the sixteenth century.

There is a richly carved oak staircase and the State rooms, hung with expensive Brussels and other tapestries, were decorated in 1675 by the third Earl of Northampton to repair Civil War damage.

Castle Ashby is owned by the Marquess of Northampton.

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

A child in the ‘Sixties playig  LPs on a stereo record player

“Is it a British or a German submarine? We must be able to hear the difference!”

This was the awesome task set by R.A.F. Coastal Command when they approached the Decca gramophone company during World War II. It was a secret assignment and called for a record to be produced which could be used as a training aid to familiarise airmen with the subtle differences made by the sounds of the enemy and our own submarines.

Difficult as the problem was, Decca came up with the answer – a record with such a wide range of sensitive sound that it was completely satisfactory.

Intensive research had produced an exciting new recording technique, stretching the gramophone’s capabilities to a greater extent than ever before. Adapted later for musical reproduction after the war’s end, the process became known as “ffrr” (full frequency range recording,) and Decca took it as their trademark.

It was not long after the war, that another kind of battle began, this time between the rival recording companies.

In 1948, Columbia Records of America held a Press Conference in New York to launch a revolutionary idea, invented by Dr. Peter Goldmark, called the LP (Long Playing) record. Their new 12-inch disc turned out to be made of non-breakable vinyl plastic, played at 33 and a third r.p.m. on microgrooves and lasted 23 minutes per side. It had about 250 grooves to the inch instead of about 80 in the 78 r.p.m. record. Read the rest of this article »