The climax of the Artemis II mission lasted just a few hours. The capsule, named Integrity, rounded the Moon, the crew becoming the most distant humans in history as they moved from its sunward side into its shadow. The familiar features of the permanently Earth-facing side made way for the more heavily cratered far side.
My wife found the list in the back pocket of my gardening trousers. That ought to have been a clue, but she didn’t pick up on it. She marched into the study with an interrogative stride. “Who the hell are Mimi? Orla? Charlotte? Anya? Lady Christl!?” I felt a pang of relief that she hadn’t
In January 1894, an assistant of Thomas Edison made a five-second silent film of Fred Ott taking snuff and then sneezing. It was the second ever film to be copyrighted – and it started with a sneeze. The sneeze is a blessing and a curse, associated with both good fortune and ill omen. In ancient
I loved my mustache. Unfortunately, my fondness for it seemed inversely proportionate to its popularity among my peers. After much unsolicited feedback from friends (“You look like a young Peter Mandelson”) and online strangers (“You look like a 1970s porn star”), I put a poll on my Instagram asking my followers whether or not I
Horrible injuries are commonplace in boxing but none, surely, has been quite so devastating as that sustained by the heavyweight Jarrell Miller. In the moment it took for an uppercut to land, the Brooklyn boxer’s life changed forever. Miller went from professional athlete to, well, “the man who got his wig punched off.” I have
It is widely known that when a Duke of York is down, he is down, and the recent hit-piece in Heat – “‘Pathetic’ Andrew’s tantrums over prized teddy bears” – found a new way of kicking Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Its royal source said that “being forced to move [out of Royal Lodge] has sent him into
What is the literal cut-off point for women having very long hair (and by “long” I mean where it almost goes into the toilet bowl)? Thirty? Forty? Fifty? Try 65 – the age I turned this year. If this strikes you as grossly inappropriate, in theory I’m with you. The unspoken rule is that the
It’s strange the things that can trigger amity or affection. At the beginning of the capsule/pod coffee-maker craze, when George Clooney, with his come-to-bed eyes, was seducing the world with Nespresso machines, I bonded with my eldest daughter’s Italian boyfriend over the Bialetti Moka pot. Notwithstanding the expense and waste of the capsule coffee makers,
