1. A lonely place to die

The last train arrived at Lintz Green Station at 10.42 PM — ten minutes later than scheduled. Lintz Green was a quiet rural station, midway between Newcastle upon Tyne and Consett on the now-defunct Consett branch of the North Eastern Railway in the north of England. Formerly a colliery line, it carried passengers, coal, and iron from the industrial villages of County Durham through the picturesque Derwent Valley to the bustling River Tyne.

It was Saturday, October 7, 1911, and the train was a little busier than usual with a handful of residents from the sparsely-populated surrounds returning from a…

I don’t believe in witchcraft, ghosts, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, or anything else that can’t be proven to exist via science and logic. However, I am interested in all of the above and pretty much anything else that can be considered paranormal or supernatural. This is mainly because I spent much of my childhood reading Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World books. But it’s also because I grew up right next to a very strange place that would have given even the late old Arthur C. the willies.

The Witches’ Circle is a ring of oak trees around 60 feet…

“Boom! A muffled roar like that of a mighty thunderclap, a shake like that of an earthquake, and a flash that turned the black sky red!” — Kentish Independent, February 15, 1907

On the morning of Sunday, February 11, 1907, the district of Woolwich in south-east London was rocked by a huge explosion. The blast shattered windows, demolished walls, and blew off roofs. Shockwaves woke people from their sleep across a radius of 40 miles. A flash from the explosion could be seen as far away as Southend-on-Sea.

The explosion occurred at the Royal Arsenal, a thousand-acre site for the…

Ned Doig went to Blackburn in 1889 and came back with a bag full of gold. The Arbroath and Scotland goalkeeper had agreed to play for Blackburn Rovers against Notts County for the handsome sum of £25. Blackburn won the match 9–0, and Ned had “very little to do.” It was a nice afternoon’s work for an amateur player who usually earned his crust as an apprentice baker. Scottish Ned was unfamiliar with English banknotes and, wary of being ripped off, insisted on being paid in gold sovereigns.

Ned would soon become much more familiar with English banknotes of every…

I. We are taken

It was just after sunset on an August evening in 1718, and something was approaching through the twilight. The sloop the Francis had come to anchor in Delaware Bay, on the north-eastern seaboard of America. The single-masted Francis and its small crew would wait out the ebb tide before completing their journey from Antigua to Boston. The sloop’s first mate, James Killing, peered over the water. “There’s a canoe-a-coming,” he said. “I wish they be friends.” The sloop was only lightly armed, and the busy trading routes that brought goods and people to the colonies were patrolled by sea-robbers. …

“Myself and many others would not have survived without football” — Steve Bloomer

In 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, several of Britain’s most famous soccer players were imprisoned in a brutal internment camp at Ruhleben, near Berlin. Surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards, living in squalor and on meager rations, and with their families and freedom far out of reach, the prisoners found purpose and salvation through the Ruhleben Football Association, which organized soccer competitions that were played and watched by thousands of prisoners.

“An epic story of the triumph of the British spirit of…

FIFA president Jules Rimet’s dream of organizing an international football world championship — a standalone competition for men’s national association soccer teams — was realized when Uruguay hosted and won the inaugural World Cup tournament in 1930. But international football was already 60 years old by 1930, and there had been several previous competitions, won by several previous champions. Working backwards from 1930, these are football’s world champions Before The World Cup (BTWC):

1924 & 1928: Uruguay

One night in Turin, a helicopter buzzed over an illuminated bowl that was filled with sound and life. This was the Stadio delle Alpi, the Stadium of the Alps. Europe’s highest mountain range could be seen to the west, looming out of the evening dusk. The brand new stadium had been purpose-built for the 1990 World Cup finals — Italia 90. Like some futuristic update of an ancient Roman amphitheater, its sleek oval design seemed more reminiscent of a downed flying saucer than a traditional soccer ground. In the streets around the stadium, streams of football fans and convoys of…