Category: United Kingdom
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Just the -fax, Ma’am
Police sergeant Joe Friday never actually said “just the facts ma’am” on the vintage television show Dragnet, according to Snopes. Rather, the character played by Jack Webb uttered different lines. People later confused things and created the classic phrase now erroneously attributed to the show. A similar confusion surrounded the suffix “-fax” appended to surnames…
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Bowls
All that talk of bowling greens in the previous article increased my curiosity about the sport of bowls (or lawn bowls) in general. It’s similar to a family of Continental lawn bowling games including Bocce and Pétanque. Essentially, it spread wherever the British Empire extended. I’m not sure why I didn’t discover Bowls a couple…
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Congrats or Something
It was like one of those mystery shopping contests where someone enters a store and suddenly confetti and balloons rain from the ceiling when the one-millionth customer crosses the threshold, and wins a big prize. Except it was four thousand. And I couldn’t provide anything valuable. Congratulations to “Peter” for posting Twelve Mile Circle’s 4000th…
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Middling
Some of the recent articles included places in the New York City area, an odd coincidence. I also happened to spot an interesting name on Long Island during the process, a place called Middle Island. It appeared to be pretty close to the middle of Long Island, which indeed is a long island. I drove…
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Résumé Bait and Switch
New reader “Thomas” sent an email to 12MC concerning an institution of higher learning seemingly out of place geographically. The University of California has a number of affiliated campuses, although none of them are located in Pennsylvania. Yet, oddly there’s a California University of Pennsylvania. As always, there was a twist to the situation as…
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Keep it Moving
Twelve Mile Circle examined freeways and motorways with the most lanes previously. That was a measurement of potential capacity. Would those massively-wide behemoths continue to reign supreme once someone posted actual traffic volumes? That wasn’t the case except for one notable exception. Comparisons weren’t easy although Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) seemed to be a…
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British Roads Oddities
I spent quite a long time, probably a solid couple of hours going through the British Roads FAQ on Roads.org.uk. I found map locations for those that fascinated me the most. It presented an extensive FAQ and I’ve shared a small sample of questions and explanations below. Links and all due credit should go to…
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Move Along, Nothing to See Here
The signs claimed “On this site in 1897 nothing happened.” It felt mildly amusing, maybe even a tiny bit clever the first time — the first time! — I saw one of their ilk several years ago. They mimicked the look-and-feel of genuine historical markers with faux cast iron, bold font, adorned with a couple…
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Public Bridleway
I noticed that OpenStreetMap included “Tag:highway=bridleway” along with “designation=public_bridleway.” That’s awesome! A bridleway is an equestrian trail or a horse-friendly road. Perhaps it might even be considered a highway for horses according to the OpenStreeMap tag. Some of them trace back to ancient transit corridors. However, others are of more modern vintage having been developed…