I was just preparing a lesson for my Year 7 students about password security and it got me thinking.... But before that, did you know that, based on studies of data breaches, the most common password is - 123456. Of all passwords leaked, this makes up 4% of all passwords! The top 25 passwords, that

Of all the mysteries of ancient Egypt, one of the things that has puzzled me for ages is how the ancient Egyptians were able to carve elaborate hieroglyphic texts into hard stones like granite.    There’s lots of evidence to show that  to drill hard stones the ancient craftsmen used tubular copper d

How many planets are there in our solar system?  I always thought it was nine – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus (don’t titter!), Neptune and Pluto. Then some bright spark decided that Pluto was too small and shouldn’t be called a planet any longer, so we were down to eight. 

What's green and shoots across the night sky........? Comet C/2022 E3, of course. This week, if the night skies are clear, you get the chance to see something that no human has seen for 50,000 years......and we may never get to see ever again. This green-coloured comet will come within about

When I was a kid, my family used to spend all our holidays and any spare weekends we had in a static caravan we owned in a small village on the North Wales coast. Near to the caravan park was an Abbey - a former stately home then occupied by Armalite nuns or something. Then one summer, one of the

The Gilf Kebir plateau lies in the very south-western corner of Egypt and has been cut off by the vast swathes of surrounding desert for millennia. The cliffs of the Gilf are a thousand feet high and virtually impregnable. Although completely uninhabitable today, six or seven thousand years ago wh

it was up to one of us to report this story. Minestrone just doesn't strike me as the Rats' soup of choice. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12436729/man-RATS-FOOT-Olive-Garden-minestrone-soup.html

In “So Strange” back in January, I wrote about the destruction of Tunguska in Siberia – an event that may have been caused by a comet exploding over that vast forested wilderness (https://www.citizensofboomtown.com/city-hall/so-strange/tunguska).  We’re regularly getting other reminders of the ri

Image: Archaeology Art Store With all the focus right now on better batteries to power our phones and for new battery technology to make electric cars go further and further, it’s interesting to ponder about an object found in Baghdad in 1936. During the building of a rai

In the early morning of 17th June 1908 something exploded over the remote forested wilderness of Tunguska in Siberia– laying waste to over 80 million trees and devastating an area of more than 2000 square kilometres. The multi-megaton blast was one of the largest explosions known to man – hundreds

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26302476 De De’s post yesterday on Lizzie Borden made me think about a question I’ve been wrestling with for years – whether I believe in ghosts? I think I do believe – or at least I

You will all be used to ‘anniversary’ posts on Citizens of Boomtown – where we celebrate a birthday or the anniversary of a single or album. But today marks a particularly significant anniversary in Coldog’s world. 100 years ago today, Howard Carter and his team discovered the nearly intact burial

I was hoping to share some photos from The Rats at Rewind North this evening but ..... let's just say things didn't go to plan 😆 In fact, you could say my plans for the evening went down the pan...... ....talking of which, archaeologists may have recently found the world’s oldest flushing toile

Many of you know about my interest in ancient Egypt.  In the years before the war in Libya that overthrew Gaddafi, it was possible to travel into Egypt’s deserts – though even back then, these trips needed a lot or planning -  official permits and armed police as security. Deserts are amazing pla

So, Columbus discovered the New World in 1492, right? Wrong. For a start, we know that the Vikings had settled in Newfoundland - though it does seem that there weren’t many Norse settlements and they were occupied for only a short period of time. Photo: Norse settlemen

I probably should warn everyone that this post is a bit gruesome. If you are interested in this strange phenomenon and it’s gruesome photos you’re after, there are plenty of images on Google and Wikipedia. Charles Dickens’ 1853 novel “Bleak House” may contain one of the earliest published account

There is a nursery rhyme, here in the States, about a woman who lived in Fall River, Massachusetts between 1860 and 1927.. Her name was Lizzie Borden.. Lizzie lived in a home at 92 Second Street with her sister, Emma, her father, Andrew, and her step-mother, Abby.. On a summer day in August of 189