Two Nobel Prizes, a pocketful of radium and a laboratory where the health and safety officer would have fainted on arrival PASSY, FRANCE, 4 July 1934 – Marie Curie died in a sanatorium in the Haute-Savoie at the age of sixty-six, of a blood disease that her doctors could not explain and that history has since pinned, almost certainly, on a lifetime of exposure to radiation. She was the first…
Britain’s politicians have turned advance warning into an art form, and the satirists are keeping score Pitch-rolling is apparently what politicians call a tax increase when they tell you about it sufficiently early that you have time to forget being angry. British governments used to spring bad news on taxpayers. Labour has modernised the process by offering advance reservations. A tax announced four years early technically spends its first three…
Britain embraces participatory government by allowing citizens to watch their money approaching the Treasury several years before it disappears LONDON – British taxpayers have expressed mild concern after discovering that Prime Minister Andy Burnham‘s political pitch-rolling strategy appears to involve repeatedly rolling the pitch directly across their wallets. The Wallet Goes Two-Dimensional: Honest Conversations and Difficult Choices The first few passes went largely unnoticed. Britons were told the country needed…
Downing Street imports management technique allowing unpleasant decisions to mature gently in the public consciousness before appearing on the bank statement LONDON – Prime Minister Andy Burnham has discovered the corporate leadership principle that bad news becomes approximately 63 percent friendlier if announced several years before anyone has to experience it. The principle is known as pitch-rolling. Pitch-Rolling Explained: Your Mechanic Calls in 2026 About a 2030 Transmission In ordinary…
Council Announces ULEZ Zone Will Now Follow Pedestrians on Foot | Portable emissions boundary to be carried by enforcement officer walking three metres behind resident
Queen Victoria’s gene, a faith healer in the palace and a boy whose bruises were a state secret SPAŁA, POLAND, October 1912 – In a hunting lodge in the Polish forests, the eight-year-old heir to the Russian throne lay in bed, grey-faced, with a swelling in his groin so painful that he screamed for days. Bulletins were issued. Priests were summoned. A newspaper somewhere printed the first line of an…
The father of the scientific method caught his death stuffing a hen with snow, which is exactly the sort of experiment no ethics committee would have approved HIGHGATE, 9 April 1626 – Sir Francis Bacon, philosopher, lawyer, former Lord Chancellor and champion of learning by experiment, died on Easter Sunday in a borrowed bed with a chill on his chest. He was sixty-five. His final experiment, by his own account,…
The man who escaped from every lock on earth couldn’t escape his own appendix, because nobody could talk him into lying down DETROIT, 31 October 1926 – Harry Houdini, the greatest escapologist who ever lived, died on Halloween afternoon at Grace Hospital in Detroit, aged fifty-two. Over a long career he had broken out of handcuffs, straitjackets, locked trunks, milk cans filled with water and the Siberian prison van. He…
Thirty-five years old, a Requiem he never finished and a death certificate that has launched a hundred theories, none of them involving Salieri VIENNA, 5 December 1791 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died shortly before one o’clock in the morning at his apartment near St Stephen’s Cathedral, aged thirty-five. He had written more beautiful music than most composers manage in twice the time, and he left behind a wife in debt,…
A trained apothecary who knew exactly what his cough meant, a doctor who starved him on anchovies, and a poet dead at twenty-five with his best work already written ROME, 23 February 1821 – John Keats died at about eleven o’clock at night in a small rented room beside the Spanish Steps, with his friend, the painter Joseph Severn, holding him. He was twenty-five years old. In just over four…
Found delirious outside a Baltimore tavern in someone else’s clothes, the master of mystery left behind the greatest unsolved case in American literature BALTIMORE, 7 October 1849 – Edgar Allan Poe, the man who gave the world detective fiction, the horror short story and a talking raven, died on a Sunday morning in a Baltimore hospital aged forty. The circumstances of his last week have never been explained. He’d left…
A fever, a fortnight of feasting, and a bedside crowded with generals who mostly wanted to know who got the empire BABYLON, 10 June 323 BC – Alexander the Great conquered Persia, Egypt and most of the known world before his thirty-third birthday. In the end he was beaten by something with no army, no elephants and no sense of occasion. A fever. It took roughly two weeks to finish…
Antivenom exists, A&E exists, and one very confused snake is still waiting for an apology from the history books ALEXANDRIA, 12 August 30 BC – The last queen of Egypt, a woman who had charmed two of the most powerful Romans alive and outlasted most of her own family, was found dead on a golden couch with her two attendants beside her. Octavian’s guards had burst in to find the…
The Scourge of God conquered half of Europe and then drowned on his own wedding night, which is the sort of detail the history books should have led with PANNONIA, 453 AD – Attila the Hun had marched armies to the gates of Constantinople, extorted gold from two empires and turned the Pope back from Rome with nothing but a stern look and a very large tent. He died after…
A cancelled route, a stalled motor car outside a sandwich shop and the most consequential reversing manoeuvre in history SARAJEVO, 28 June 1914 – Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Habsburg throne, was shot dead in an open car at about eleven in the morning, along with his wife Sophie. The killing set off a chain of ultimatums, mobilisations and declarations of war that, within six weeks, had…
Poisoned cakes, a courtyard chase, a river dunking and a mysterious British revolver: the Mad Monk’s final night remains the messiest murder in Russian history PETROGRAD, 17 December 1916 (Old Style) – Grigori Rasputin, the Siberian peasant who had made himself the confidant of the Tsarina and the most hated man in Russia, was murdered in the early hours of the morning by a group of aristocratic conspirators. Over the…
A hospital a short drive from Dealey Plaza, a trauma team that did everything right and a row over paperwork that followed the president’s coffin out of the building DALLAS, TEXAS, 22 November 1963 – President John F. Kennedy was shot in an open limousine in Dealey Plaza at about half past twelve, and pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital at one o’clock. The limousine had covered the distance in…
The boy pharaoh’s tomb held 130 walking sticks, which tells you most of what you need to know about his health THEBES, c. 1324 BC – Tutankhamun, pharaoh of Egypt, died at about eighteen or nineteen years old, after a reign of roughly nine years. He had come to the throne as a small boy, been married off to his half-sister and presided over the restoration of the old gods…
Fourteen physicians, a bucket of blood, hot irons and pigeon droppings on the royal feet: the Merry Monarch’s last week was no laughing matter WHITEHALL, 6 February 1685 – Charles II, the Merry Monarch, died after four days of the most ambitious medical care ever inflicted on an English king. He had survived exile, civil war, plague and the Great Fire of London. He did not survive his doctors. As…
The first president caught a sore throat in the sleet and was bled into the grave by three of the finest physicians in Virginia MOUNT VERNON, VIRGINIA, 14 December 1799 – George Washington, the man who beat the British Army, refused a crown and handed back power after two terms, died at home on a Saturday night aged sixty-seven. He’d had a sore throat for about a day and a…
A dawn duel on a New Jersey ledge, a rowing boat across the Hudson and an argument about who fired first that has outlived everyone involved WEEHAWKEN, NEW JERSEY, 11 July 1804 – Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary of the United States and a man who wrote more words before breakfast than most of his rivals managed in a year, was shot by the sitting Vice President on a…
The Emperor who conquered Europe was packed off by the British to a rock in the South Atlantic, where his stomach, his house and his enemies finished the job LONGWOOD HOUSE, ST HELENA, 5 May 1821 – Napoleon Bonaparte, who had once ruled more of Europe than anyone since Charlemagne, died at around eleven minutes to six in the evening in a damp, rat-infested house on one of the most…
A British comedy on stage, a twenty-three-year-old army surgeon in the audience, and a bed too short for the patient WASHINGTON, 15 April 1865 – Abraham Lincoln died at twenty-two minutes past seven in the morning in a rented bedroom across the road from Ford’s Theatre. He had been shot the night before while watching a play, and he lingered for nine hours without regaining consciousness. A modern reader wants…
Energy minister announces electricity is now a human right, but engineers warn that turbines remain stubbornly dependent on physics rather than political enthusiasm LONDON – Britain’s theoretical socialist government has announced that electricity will become free for every household, prompting celebrations across the country and considerable confusion among the engineers responsible for generating it. Under the Universal Energy Equality Programme, every citizen will be entitled to unlimited affordable electricity, although…
Ministers celebrate historic reductions in the official price of bread, meat and milk, while supermarkets report a minor technical problem involving the continued existence of food LONDON – The government has announced a historic victory over food inflation after introducing price controls that have successfully reduced the cost of groceries consumers can no longer find. Bread is affordable. Milk is affordable. Meat is affordable. Fresh vegetables are remarkably affordable. The…
Ministers celebrate the moral triumph of universal treatment while an elderly London patient requests the minor additional benefit of receiving treatment before his next birthday LONDON – Britain’s theoretical healthcare revolution has achieved the remarkable distinction of guaranteeing every citizen the right to medical attention while leaving millions of treatment pathways on a waiting list. Ministers insist the existence of a waiting list should not obscure the achievement of providing…
From Soviet shortages to East German automobiles and Venezuela’s collapse, history repeatedly confronts central planners with the inconvenient difference between ideological ambition and economic results LONDON – An international committee of theoretical socialist officials has announced that previous economic failures should not be used to judge socialism, because genuine socialism has apparently never been attempted by anyone whose economy collapsed. The committee described this as a major breakthrough in political…
Government guarantees toast, butter, eggs and coffee for every citizen, but Ministry of Breakfast admits production remains an unfortunate capitalist technicality LONDON – Theoretical socialism has solved world hunger by declaring breakfast a fundamental human right, although government officials concede that the country’s remaining farmers, bakers and chickens have not yet been told what their obligations are. Under the new Universal Breakfast Guarantee, every citizen is entitled to two slices…
Government celebrates record university enrolment while employers explain that collecting qualifications is not quite the same as creating economic opportunities LONDON – Britain’s theoretical socialist government has announced that higher education will be guaranteed to every citizen, ensuring the nation develops the world’s most highly qualified population of unemployed people. Under the Universal Academic Opportunity Programme, the government will expand university enrolment, subsidise additional qualifications and encourage citizens to stay…
Royal Mail’s proposed cut of up to 2,500 head office and support roles by the end of 2027 follows a 70 per cent slump in letter volumes and a very expensive new owner LONDON – Royal Mail is cutting up to 2,500 jobs, head office and support roles, because letters have fallen over and the company would like to fall a bit less. What’s the deal with a postal service…
