It is now over four years since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers heralded the credit crunch and the start of the one of the deepest global recessions in history. We are well versed in warning stores of booms, busts and bubbles. The South Sea Bubble and the Wall Street Crash are well known examples of speculative bubbles bursting with catastrophic effect. Less well known, but similarly destructive, was the British ‘Railway Mania’ of the 1840s.

The warning signs were glaring and obvious in hindsight. In 1846, the British Parliament had authorised almost 5,000 miles of new railways. This single year’s allocation would amount to nearly half of the entire modern railway network. Thousands more miles had been authorised in the heady build up to this apogee.

Or perhaps it could be discerned from the vast quantities of capital being sunk into British railway projects during the increasingly frenzied 40s. By 1847, over £40 million had been invested and throughout the decade well over £150 million was raised in capital. This equates to some £380 billion in 2010 terms as an equivalent share of GDP. If all of the railway schemes put forward to Parliament had been authorised it would have needed £250 million of capital to build.

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Vaguely Interesting Round-up | 14 November 2013

• There is a tumblr site devoted to people who’ve decided to use the Berlin Holocaust memorial as the backdrop to their Grindr profiles.   If you see pictures of the memorial you can, perhaps, begin to see how this has happened – the memorial is a field of irregular blocks of granite creating claustrophobic walkways and a visually arresting backdrop. But Grindr? Really? Just no.

• If we are ever faced with living through a post-nuclear apocalypse it will be good to know that some things will remain the same. Plans for the survival of the British Royal Family  and the UK government were drawn up in the bleakest days of the Cold War. According to this fascinating article in the Daily Telegraph, the Queen was to be put aboard a “floating bunker” and moved around remote Scottish lochs in the event of a nuclear attack on Britain. The declassified papers went on to explain that the Head of State was to be kept separate from the government so that she could appoint a replacement Prime Minister in the event of the annihilation of the Cabinet.

• Combining a street map of London and census information on second languages spoken in the household produces this fascinating cultural map of London. Some entries are unsurprising – Bengali in Tower Hamlets, Panjabi in Southall and French in South Kensington. But the map reveals some lesser known language communities and some general trends. Two pockets of Japanese speakers are found in Acton and Finchley, whilst Korean speakers congregate around New Malden. A large Nepalese community exists in Woolwich, and large numbers of Tamil speakers exist in pockets in west, south and east London – a sad reflection on the Sri Lankan civil war and resulting Tamil diaspora. One of the most interesting trends is the belt of Polish speaking communities around London’s Zone 2. From Leyton to Palmers Green, Hendon to Wembley and Roehampton to Streatham, they have become one of the largest second language communities in the capital.

• Is the United States of America one country or a collection of 50 states? Neither, according to a new book (American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America) by Colin Woodard, a reporter at the Portland Press Herald. Instead, North America becomes 11 distinct ‘nations’, ranging from the Hispanic orientated El Norte of Mexico, New Mexico, Southern California, Arizona and Southern Texas, to New France of Quebec and Louisiana. Tidewater, New Netherland, Left Coast and Greater Appalachia.

Vincent Hanna: Master William Pitt, the Even Younger, are you disappointed?

Pitt the Even Younger: Yes I’m horrified. I smeared my opponents, bribed the press to be on my side, and threatened to torture the electorate if we lost. I fail to see what a more decent politician would have done.

Blackadder the Third, Dish and Dishonesty

What was Britain’s most famous rotten borough? Old Sarum? This exposed hill top had just three houses and seven voters in the 1830s but sent two representatives to the House of Commons.

Or perhaps Dunwich? This formally prosperous seaside town had largely fallen beneath the churning waves of the North Sea. By the 1830s it boasted just 44 houses and 32 voters but also elected two MPs in parliamentary elections.

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Amongst the seemingly essential accoutrement for a dictator is the acquisition of a short and snappy title. The trend was set by Adolf Hitler becoming der Führer – a term that literally translates as leader but which also has an almost mystic sense of being a guide. Plenty of other dictators had similar names, but few were as effective as this Germanic invention and some sound decidedly comic.

In 1934, Adolf Hitler succeeded Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg as the head of state of Germany. Hitler did not, however, assume the title of President. This was left vacant – ostensibly out of respect for von Hindenburg but also because the Chancellor wanted to remove all the trappings of the discredited Weimar Republic. Instead, Hitler became Führer und Reichskanzler.

By the time the Third Reich was firmly established, this title developed into Führer des deutschen Reiches und Volkes and by 1942 it reached an apogee of grandiosity with Führer des Großdeutschen Reiches and Führer der Nation. Whilst this was not as absurd as Größter Feldherr aller Zeiten (Greatest Military Commander of All Time), it was decidedly more expansive than a plain Mr President or Prime Minister.

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Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 5 November 2013

• One of the most incongruous images present in Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Stalin: In the Court of the Red Tsar is Josef Stalin as a DJ. The Soviet dictator loved to put music on for his guests and “presided over the American gramophone … putting his favourite records on”.

• Green Lanes was, for much of its history, a drovers’ road (or a cattle run) connecting Hertfordshire’s lush pastures to Smithfield Market. At approximately 7.5 miles from end to end, it is one of London’s longest streets.

• The myriad persecutions of the Jews of first Germany and then continental Europe are well documented. One that I hadn’t come across before was the 1939 requirement that German Jews had to add the names Sarah or Israel if their own names were not deemed ‘Jewish’ enough.

Fordlandia! Where civilisation conquers the wild and untamed heart of the great Amazon rainforest. A city forged in adversity, the triumph of will and the product of the daring imagination of Henry Ford. This is America’s new frontier; a wilderness transformed by technology, labour and innovation into the prosperous hub of the world’s rubber production.

To some it was a daring vision, a glimpse of the future from one of America’s, heck, the world’s most farsighted industrialists. To others it was another sign that the wheels were metaphorically and perhaps literally coming off a once great car-producing giant.

The United States of America is a vast country, stretching from sea to shining sea, its land richly endowed with iron ore, coal, oil, timber and rich pasture. From these natural resources she has at her disposal all the elements for the wonder of the twentieth century – the automobile. Steel, wood panelling and leather were all sourced from home – a relentless flow of goods entering Detroit and other factory towns to be turned into cars, vans and lorries.

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The Declaration of Independence of the United States was drafted by Thomas Jefferson. His original draft was, however, reviewed and edited by the Second Continental Congress before it was approved, printed and signed. What changed between the final draft by Jefferson and the approved version provide a fascinating insight in to American society and politics at the time of the War of Independence.

As a rousing text, Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence has few equals. The second paragraph features the famous introduction:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

They are fine words which continue to reverberate down the centuries. But its universal application was somewhat limited – it was drafted by a slave-owner and adopted by many Congressmen who also owned slaves. The irony, if not hypocrisy, of this unambiguous statement set against the realty for hundreds of thousands of slaves in the America of the 1770s, was not missed. Samuel Johnson pithily observed in 1775:

“How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”

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John Adams, a key Founding Father and the second President of the United States, was also responsible for drafting the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In doing so, he devised the oldest functioning written constitution in continuous effect in the world.

John Adams had spent decades languishing as one history’s most overlooked Founding Father. Overshadowed by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, the second President of the United States did not seem to get the attention his achievements and long public service deserved.

That changed with the publication of David McCullough’s biography ‘John Adams’. A lavish HBO miniseries based on the book shone more light on Adams and helped in the rehabilitation of his historical position.

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Vaguely Interesting Round-up | 31 October 2013

• When Tony Blair visited Kosovo in 2010 he was acclaimed as one of the key figures who helped the fledgling nation break free from Serbia. Thousands took to the streets to greet him “some carrying British flags, and posters describing him as a “leader, friend and hero”". What he may have not expected was to meet nine children named after him. Tonibler has, since 1999, become a “quite common” name in the country.

• Some of our favourite websites have now been around for almost two decades. Quite a lot has changed since those distant dial up days. Can you remember what those websites looked like when they were launched? If not, take a trip down Mashable’s memory lane for this gallery of decidedly basic website design.

• People are supposed to dream of a golden era. So which era would Americans most want to go back to? The fabulous 50s and the swinging sixties are particularly popular in this chart from the Economist.

• Crossrail is a staggering civil engineering project. A sense of the scale is show in this picture gallery from the Telegraph – see the vast new caverns at Stepney Green and the extent of the Tottenham Court Road station site for a sense of the sheer size of the undertaking.

• Did you ever wonder what actually happens cum clave when the Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church meet to elect a new pope? This infographic from Italian daily newspaper La Stampa (The Press) reveals all.

Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 31 October 2013

• Bluetooth is a very useful technology that allows devices to ‘talk’ to each other. The name comes from the 10th century Danish King Harald Blåtand or Harold Bluetooth in English. King Blåtand helped unite warring factions in parts of what are now Norway, Sweden and Denmark. As Bluetooth technology was created as an open standard to promote connectivity, it was decided that this would be an appropriate name.

• Traditionally, the death of the sovereign in the United Kingdom resulted in the immediate dissolution of Parliament within six months and thus the requirement to hold a General Election. This requirement was abolished throughout the British Empire by the Representation of the People Act 1867.

• Six post office branches are not open to the general public: Court (at Buckingham Palace), the House of Commons, Portcullis House (part of the Parliamentary estate) the Royal Automobile Club at 89 Pall Mall, the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh and Windsor Castle at Windsor.