ON PREVIOUS DAYS:
- YESTERDAY:
The Bermuda Triangle Theory - DAY BEFORE:
New York's First Terror Attack - DAY BEFORE THAT:
Pop-Tarts: So Hot, They're Cool! - DAY BEFORE BEFORE THAT:
The 19th Century Drunk Driver
ON THIS DAY
The Man Who Bought Stonehenge
Barrister Cecil Chubb attended a Salisbury auction on September 21st, 1915 intending to buy curtains or chairs, but impulsively bought… Stonehenge. Yes, that Stonehenge.
Built by Neolithic and Bronze Age communities for purposes still debated today – ceremonial? religious? – for centuries the site had been treated less like a sacred monument and more like an inconvenient field ornament. Sheep grazed around it, tourists scratched their names into it, and the Aristocratic family who owned it had begun to charge entry to pay for fences and security guards to keep vandals away. But then their only heir died in the War, and Stonehenge was put up for sale.
In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly reveal how Chubb selflessly gave up the monument to the nation (though did effectively earn himself a knighthood in return); ask whatever happened to Chubb’s condition that ticket prices (now up to £70) would not exceed one shilling; and reveal what guests get to do in the ‘stone-circle experience’…
Further Reading:
• ‘The Man Who Bought Stonehenge And Gave it Away’ (Amusing Planet, 2022): https://www.amusingplanet.com/2022/08/the-man-who-bought-stonehenge-and-gave.html
• ‘Stonehenge Sold for £6,600 A Hundred Years Ago Today’ (English Heritage, 2015): https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about/search-news/stonehenge-sold-100-years-ago/
• ‘Stonehenge Secrets: What Lies Beneath? | Holy Marvels’ (History, 2024):
ON THIS DAY
The Man Who Bought Stonehenge
Barrister Cecil Chubb attended a Salisbury auction on September 21st, 1915 intending to buy curtains or chairs, but impulsively bought… Stonehenge. Yes, that Stonehenge.
Built by Neolithic and Bronze Age communities for purposes still debated today – ceremonial? religious? – for centuries the site had been treated less like a sacred monument and more like an inconvenient field ornament. Sheep grazed around it, tourists scratched their names into it, and the Aristocratic family who owned it had begun to charge entry to pay for fences and security guards to keep vandals away. But then their only heir died in the War, and Stonehenge was put up for sale.
In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly reveal how Chubb selflessly gave up the monument to the nation (though did effectively earn himself a knighthood in return); ask whatever happened to Chubb’s condition that ticket prices (now up to £70) would not exceed one shilling; and reveal what guests get to do in the ‘stone-circle experience’…
Further Reading:
• ‘The Man Who Bought Stonehenge And Gave it Away’ (Amusing Planet, 2022): https://www.amusingplanet.com/2022/08/the-man-who-bought-stonehenge-and-gave.html
• ‘Stonehenge Sold for £6,600 A Hundred Years Ago Today’ (English Heritage, 2015): https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about/search-news/stonehenge-sold-100-years-ago/
• ‘Stonehenge Secrets: What Lies Beneath? | Holy Marvels’ (History, 2024):
ON PREVIOUS DAYS:
- YESTERDAY:
The Bermuda Triangle Theory - DAY BEFORE:
New York's First Terror Attack - DAY BEFORE THAT:
Pop-Tarts: So Hot, They're Cool! - DAY BEFORE BEFORE THAT:
The 19th Century Drunk Driver
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OLLY MANN
Olly Mann made his name with another trivia-wielding podcast, Answer Me This! with Helen Zaltzman – and now presents The Modern Mann, The Week Unwrapped, and Four Thought for BBC Radio Four. He also has an A-Level in History, so Dan Snow beware.
REBECCA MESSINA
Rebecca got a passion for podcasting working at The Week magazine and a passion for trivia appearing on University Challenge in 2011, making The Retrospectors her natural home.
ARION MCNICOLL
Arion started out in satirical news in Australia, then moved to the UK to work for ostensibly serious publications including The Times, CNN, and The Week… before realising that since around 2016 the news has all been satire really.
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