Yoram Gross (1926–2015) was born in Krakow Poland, to a Jewish family. He lived during WW2 under the Nazis, with his family on Oskar Sch­in­d­ler’s list of humans rescued from slaughter in 1944, but the Grosses survived by moving hiding places dozens of times. Dot and the Kangaroo,  1977, yoramgrossfilms The Camel Boy 1984, IMDb Yoram’s first love was music, studying at Krakow Uni post-war. He then studied film under Jerzy Toeplitz at the Polish Film In­stitute. In 1950 he moved to Israel, working as a newsreel and docum­entary cameraman, and later as an ..read more

Cecil William Baldwin (1887–1961) was born in Melbourne and trained at the Burnley School of Horticulture, working as a landscape gar­d­ener until the outbreak of WW1. Cecil enlisted in the 40th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Forces and served as a lieutenant in France and Belgium. He was wounded and repatriated home in 1918. Following the end of the war, Cecil Baldwin worked in the Repatriat­ion Department in Hobart where he was the officer in charge of voc­at­ional training. He also became active in community associations est­ablished for the welfare of ex-servicemen, and became ..read more

Greek royal family opening the 1896 Games followed by British Prince of Wales and Russian Duchess Olga Pinterest The first Olympic Games in the Southern Hemisphere EVER were in Mel­bourne in 1956. These Games put our beautiful city on the map, got my father’s engineering career famous and led me to be an Olympics fanatic. But I knew very little about any Games before 1956. Ancient Olympics The Games were a religious festival and a good excuse for Greeks to enjoy the festivities in Olympia in the NW Peloponnese. During the festival, animals were slaugh­t­ered in honour of Zeu ..read more

Knight, The Fishing Fleet, 1900   Boston Museum & Art Gallery. Knight, The Boys Newlyn Cornwall, 1909,   Johannesburg Art Gallery. Barbara Morden’s book dealt with the British artist born to the impov­erished Johnson fam­ily. Passion for Life: Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970) cov­er­ed Knight’s early years in Nott­ing­ham, her rel­at­ion­ship with husband Harold, life in art­ists col­on­­ies, her love of ballet, circ­us and theat­re, and travels in Eur­ope and US. It also ex­am­ined her role as the only female Offic­ial War Artist in WW2 R John Croft was the great ..read more

Kraków’s Market Square is the centre of the city’s medieval Old Town, designed in 1257 when Kraków won its charter. The grid-like layout of the Old Town and its central square has changed little in the following centuries. Always active, this 40,000 sq ms grouping of café’s, museums, clubs, pubs, music centres, historical landmarks, hotels, shows some of the best medieval architect­ure in the city. Because the med­ieval Rynek/market is surround­ed by elegant town­houses, all with their own names and histories, the import­ant histor­ical, cultural and social significance is largely intact ..read more

The 7th child in a struggling Leeds family, teenage Jimmy Savile (1926-2011) worked in coalmines in WW2 when he suffered serious injuries in an explosion. So he moved instead to work as a dance hall man­ager and disc jockey. Later he became a DJ at Radio Luxembourg and then at BBC Ra­dio 1. His work inc­l­uded regular tv appearances in Top of the Pops (1964->) and the children’s show Jim’ll Fix It (1975–>). It was on Top of the Pops that Savile displayed his  eccentric peroxided hair, ugly tracksuits, bling jewellery, cigars, cartoonish mannerisms, unintelligible yodelling, Yorksh­i ..read more

A Bluestocking was a mid C18th intellectual woman with strong scholarly or literary interests. A group was founded to dis­cuss the arts,  started by two high society ladies in Britain: heiress Elizabeth Montagu (1718–1800) and intellectual Elizabeth Vesey (c1715–91). Mrs Vesey organised the first functions in Bath. It wasn’t until she moved to London that any competitive­ness developed between them. Portraits of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo (above) by Richard Samuel, 1778 132 x 155 cm, Nat Portrait Gall  Their London salon was for intelligent discussion over tea; a chan ..read more

Cole at Oxford History Extra The first black man recorded as graduating from Cambridge was mixed-race violinist George Augustus Bridgetower (1778–1860). He was elected to Royal Society of Musicians in 1807, and att­end­ed Trinity Hall, Cambridge where he earned the degree of Bach­elor of Music in 1811. He was the first West Indian graduate recorded in university records. The second black man was New Yorker Alexander Crummell (1819–1898) who was sponsored by American Anglicans and admitted to Queens’ College, Cambridge as a family man in 1848. He cer­t­ainly experienced verba ..read more

James Cook Snr brought his large family from Scotland in 1736 where he had secured more reliable employ­ment on estate farms. As a bo­n­us, he could send young James to school at his employer’s  expense.                                  Capt Cook's Cottage transplanted brick by brick to Melbourne in 1934 Navigator-explorer Capt James Cook (1728-79) never lived in the cottage when his parents James and Grace built it in 1755 in Great Ayton village, Nor­th Yorkshire. [1755 was inscribed in the c ..read more

Czar Alexander II (ruled1855-81) was a great Russian royal, one of his suc­c­esses was emancipating serfs in 1861, ending the obscene sl­av­ery of Russian peasantry. This was before the US finally ended its obscene slavery in 1865. Alexander II was writing a national constit­ution, and just before he announced his ref­orms, young revolution­aries who op­posed the changes threw a bomb at his roy­al car­riage, Mar 1881. His success­or, son Czar Alexander III (ruled1881–94), ch­ose instead to pur­sue more severe policies. Still, Alexander III plan­ned to im­mediately erect a church on the site ..read more