Some links for you

[wellinghall]

Today's Matt offers a different take on the swine flu scare:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/

Oxford Arthurians might want to read this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/8022291.stm

Thirty-five favourite children's books:

Quentin Blake Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain, Edward Ardizzone; Queenie the Bantam, Bob Graham; The Box of Delights,John Masefield; Rose Blanche, Ian McEwan and Roberto Innocenti; Five Children and It, E Nesbit; Snow White, Josephine Poole; Stuart Little, EB White

Jacqueline Wilson Little Women, Louisa May Alcott; A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett; What Katy Did, Susan Coolidge; The Family from One End Street, Eve Garnett; The Railway Children, E Nesbit; Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfeild; Mary Poppins, PL Travers

Michael Morpurgo Five Go to Smuggler’s Top, Enid Blyton; Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, Virginia Lee Burton; Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens; Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling; A Book of Nonsense, Edward Lear; Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson; The Happy Prince, Oscar Wilde

Anne Fine The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken; Absolute Zero, Helen Cresswell; Just William, Richmal Crompton; Journey to the River Sea, Eva Ibbotson; Lavender’s Blue, Kathleen Lines; A Child’s Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson; The Sword in the Stone, TH White

Michael Rosen Clown, Quentin Blake; The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank; Emil and the Detectives, Erich Kästner; Not Now, Bernard, David McKee; Fairy Tales, Terry Jones; Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear, Andy Stanton; Daz 4 Zoe, Robert Swindells

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/children/article6181796.ece

"A replica 16th Century junk has sunk off Taiwan, one day short of completing an epic voyage to the US and back. The Ming dynasty-style Princess Taiping was trying to prove that China's greatest admiral, Zheng He, could have reached North America 600 years ago."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8020206.stm

"A three-seater outside toilet in Kent has been listed as a building of special architectural and historical importance."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/7251752.stm

ETA: The art of Penguin science fiction:
http://www.penguinsciencefiction.org/

Comments

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Well quite. I'm more impressed with it than I was with the Irish coracle that set out to sail the Atlantic about 30 years ago; while it was an interesting experiment, their claims that "This shows it could have been done" were rather given the lie by the fact that they ended up trapped by ice, several hundred miles from shore.

Marks for bravery - or possibly stupidity - go to Thor Heyerdal's Ra expedition, crossing the Atlantic in a reed boat. When the first one sank off Bermuda because the ship came apart, they tried again!