History

What is the tallest church bell tower in Holland?

The Dom Tower in Utrecht is the highest and oldest church tower in Holland.

It was built between 1321 and 1342, it took so long to build due to a lack of money.

Dom Tower reaches a height of 112 meters and inside the Tower are fourteen bells that weigh between 880 and 18,000 pounds.

Utrecht - Dom Toren — Image Source: holland.com

Halfway up the Dom Tower there are fourteen bells. Six were founded by Geert van Wou in 1505 and can still be heard today.

Some of the larger bells are named after saints and religious figures.

The Dom Tower was originally designed as a steeple which was attached to St Martin’s cathedral.

After what is believed to be a tornado in 1674 ripped through the city of Utrecht, the nave of the church was knocked down and remained that way for some time as the people of Utrecht did not have the money to rebuild the cathedral.

The Dom Tower was largely unharmed by the storm still remains free standing today and a beautiful paved area between the cathedral and tower exists which is known as Dom Square.

The Dom Tower is open to the public and if you are willing to climb the 465 spiral stairway to the roof, you will be provided with excellent views of Utrecht and it’s surrounding area, on a clear day you can see Amsterdam.

In the Netherlands, the tower is called the “Dom Toren”.

What does “Calling the Mare” mean?

In Medieval England, September was always known as the Harvest month, and as the many farmers would gather in the last of their crops, trying to prove that they had reaped the best crops they would try and beat their neighbouring farmers to complete the work first.

chestnut mare and foal — Image source: thehorse.com

There was a fun ceremony known as “Calling the Mare” and this involved quickly gathering the last sheaf of the harvest and shaping it into a mare shape, then delivering it to the neighbouring farmers land, shouting “Mare, Mare”.

This was supposed to signify that wild horses would come and eat their harvest if they didn’t gather it in quickly.

Once the receiving farmer had finished gathering his crop, he would pass it onto the next farmer who had not finished until it reached the last farmer.

This last farmer would then have to keep the “Mare” on display for a year to show that he was the slowest farmer.

Similarly, corn dolls were also weaved into shapes and placed in the corn fields as farmers believed that these corn dolls were the spirit of the corn goddess.

It was believed that if you did not place a corn doll in your fields the corn goddess would die and so would your crops.

So now you know what the term “Calling the Mare” means and that it comes from an old farming tradition.

History of the Swansea Canal

The Swansea Canal was constructed in 1794-1798 by the Swansea Canal Navigation Company.

The canal rises 375 feet through 36 locks from sea level at Swansea up to the valley at Abercraf.

It was originally built to carry coal down to the various industries in the lower Swansea Valley and for export. This new link to the sea enabled development all along the valley, of industries and the towns as we know them today.

Canal boats were built at yards along the route the last boat built was named the “Grace Darling” in 1918 at Godre’r Graig, which is nowadays more commonly referred locally as Godregraig.

Inevitably, with the construction of the Swansea Valley Railway, revenues on the canal declined and in 1931 it saw its last commercial cargo trip.

However, the canal was still in use with horse drawn boats used for maintenance and social events until 1958.

Who are the Know Nothings?

Back in the 1850’s in the Eastern states of American and most prominently in Massachusetts an American political group was set up and known as the “Know Nothings”.

They were mainly protestant nativism whom supported the restrictions on immigration in order to protect jobs and culture of American born citizens and also wanted to prevent Roman Catholics from holding public office.

Their name derived from the fact that whenever they were asked what the party stood for, their response was always the same – “I know nothing!”

However, back in 1855 the movement changed their party name to the American Party and lost most of its secrecy and finally disbanded in 1860.

Who invented the first jigsaw puzzle?

Back in 1767 an Englishman named John Spilsbury invented the first jigsaw puzzle. He was a London engraver and mapmaker by trade and he worked as an apprentice to Thomas Jefferys, who was the Royal Geographer to King George III.

The first jigsaw puzzle Spilsbury invented was a map of the world. He attached a picture of a world map to wood, and cut out each country individually.

It was used as a way of educating children in the subject of geography, as the students had to fix the separated countries back together in the correct spaces.

Almost 100 years later a new invention called the fret treadle saw, which was operated with foot pedals like a sewing machine was created in 1865. This gave the machinist the ability to create machine-aided curved lines which was needed to make the perfect puzzle creations.

The fret or scroll saw as it was originally known is now called a jigsaw.

Around 1880, jigsaws were all being made by machine and although some cardboard jigsaw puzzles were around the biggest sellers remained to be the wooden puzzles.

In the 20th century, mass production of jigsaw puzzles began with the creation of the the die-cut machine.

Sharp metal dies were created like stencils, these were then pressed on cardboard sheets or soft wood and subsequently cut into varying shapes depending on the number of pieces in a jigsaw.

In the 21st century, with an even larger audience online, the invention of virtual jigsaw puzzle applications were created.

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