Andrew @generalising@mastodon.flooey.org

Today's bit of #wikidataMPs work: resurrecting an old query to work out chains of descent for individual MPs whose father, grandfathers, etc were also MPs. The tweaks is that this one counts the intervening generations!

Sample for William Edgcumbe, 4th Earl of Mount Edgcumbe - goes back to his great-9th-grandfather. https://w.wiki/6TpJ

A delightful mystery, 1948: two kids playing in the attic of a Hampstead pub find a deed box, forced open, with someone's will inside it.

No-one of that name ever lived there. The passage had been nailed up for decades.

The manual of trademark guidance notes there is special statutory protection for this, the Red Cross (etc), the Olympic/Paralympic symbols... and also the International Civil Defence sign, which I had no idea even existed.

Today's unexpected legal-historical discovery: the '"Anzac" (Restriction on Trade Use of Word) Act 1916'.

"...it shall not be lawful to use in connection with any trade, business, calling, or profession the word "Anzac," or any word closely resembling that word, without the authority of a Secretary of State, given on the request of the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia or of the Dominion of New Zealand"

Still in force!

THINGS THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS, a brief and occasional #history:

Another from the "well they would, wouldn't they": 1934, and the National Bridge Association recommends bridge be taught in schools. While making it sound surprisingly murderous.

THINGS THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS, a brief and occasional #history:

Geneva, 1923: Esperanto

THINGS THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS, a brief and occasional #history:

Perthshire, 1915: "the value of plain fare", or, how to take delight in a potato

THINGS THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS, a brief and occasional #history:

London, 1926: in a surprising twist, the Institute of Actuaries thinks we should teach insurance

THINGS THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS, a brief and occasional #history:

Kingston-on-Thames, 1949: golf

(unusually, it actually got put into practice!)

THINGS THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS, a brief and occasional #history:

London, 1892: writing poetry

THINGS THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS, a brief and occasional #history:

Louisiana, 1886: "the science of forestry"

THINGS THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS, a brief and occasional #history:

Edinburgh, 1875: physiology

THINGS THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS, a brief and occasional #history:

Argyllshire, 1899: domestic science ("cooking, laundry work, dress making and housewifery")

THINGS THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS, a brief and occasional #history:

Parliament, 1895: the metric system. Well, that one went well.

THINGS THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS, a brief and occasional #history:

Surrey, 1931: the law pertaining to bigamy (!)

THINGS THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS, a brief and occasional #history:

Notts, 1949: agricultural training (which surprisingly was not a cipher for 'get them out in the fields, it's harvest time')

THINGS THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS, a brief and occasional #history:

London, 1932: biology, and/or sex

THINGS THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS, a brief and occasional #history:

Donegal, 1936: first-aid and resuscitation