A button vs the trumpet
QUESTION What are the origins of the surnames Biden and Trump?
Former U. S. vice- president and presidential nominee Joe Biden has english and French roots on the paternal side of his family, and Irish on the maternal side.
The name Biden is thought to derive from the old French word boton, meaning button. The first person to bear the name was probably a button maker.
The english surname Button was originally found in Hampshire and later in Gloucestershire and Somerset. Sir Walter de Button was progenitor of the family in 1216. William of Bitton I, also called William Button, was a medieval Bishop of Bath and Wells.
Biden’s great-great-great-grandfather was William Biden from Sussex, who was born about 1790 and emigrated to Baltimore in the early 19th century.
Joe Biden has an unusual middle name, robinette, which is the maiden name of his paternal grandmother.
According to family folklore, her ancestors crossed the Atlantic with the marquis de Lafayette, the young Frenchman who served as a general in the American army during the American War of Independence.
Biden’s maternal ancestors were the Finnegans from Co. Louth in the republic of Ireland.
Trump is an early medieval name from the middle english trumpe, meaning trumpet, or the middle High German trumpe, which means drum.
However, there is evidence the family name was originally Drumpf — a SwissGerman variant of the German word Trumpf, meaning a trump card.
For her book The Trumps: Three Generations That Built An empire, Gwenda Blair traced the Trump family tree and discovered the name was changed from Drumpf to Trump during the Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century.
Trump once quipped that it was a ‘good move’ since ‘Drumpf Tower doesn’t sound nearly as catchy!’
In 1885, at the age of 16, Donald Trump’s grandfather, Friedrich, emigrated from
Kallstadt, Palatinate (then part of the Kingdom of Bavaria), to the U.S.
He anglicised his name to Frederick in 1892 when he became a U.S. citizen. During the Klondike Gold rush in Yukon, north- west Canada, he opened a restaurant and hotel in the city of Whitehorse, and amassed a fortune.
Trump is proud of his Scottish ancestry, which comes from his mother, mary Anne macLeod.
She was born in 1912 in Tong, a village near Stornoway in the Western Isles, the daughter of a crofter and fisherman.
raised in a Scottish Gaelic- speaking household and the youngest of ten children, she emigrated to the U.S. in 1930 at the age of 18 to work as a domestic servant. She married the property magnate Fred Trump in 1936.
Alison Davey, Wombwell, S. Yorks.
QUESTION Does anyone recall a TV film about a couple of men who suddenly discover their wives are creatures from outer space?
THIS wasn’t a TV film, but an episode from the U.S. sci-fi horror series The outer Limits, which was broadcast from 1995 to 2002 and was a revival of the classic 1960s show.
Season two, episode seven, broadcast in 1996, was First Anniversary. Norman Glass (matt Frewer) is looking forward to his first wedding anniversary with his beautiful wife Ady (michelle Johnson).
His best friend, Dennis, also has a beautiful wife, Barbara. But over the next few days, the relationships unravel.
Norman is shocked to find an unhinged Dennis claiming his wife is a monster. Dennis is later killed running away from her. Norman begins to feel repulsed by
Ady, who is slimy to the touch. His wife finally admits the truth: she and Barbara are aquatic aliens whose ship crashlanded on earth.
Since they are stranded on the planet with no way to leave, they decide to try to blend in and live out the rest of their lives as human women.
They use mind control to hide their identities, but it eventually wears off on those they are close to.
Norman loses his sanity and is taken away by paramedics. At the end of the episode, we see Ady in jogging gear seducing a fit young man.
Mike Tapp, York.
QUESTION At a major incident, which of the emergency services — police, fire or ambulance — takes control?
THe simple answer is the police. most, if not all, major incidents involve serious injury or death, which require investigation before a case is put before a criminal or coroner’s court.
The police are the primary agency that investigates a death, but they rely on expert evidence from the other two agencies, which can later be called to court to give evidence.
The police are often the first to arrive at the scene and the last to leave and ensure that the area is returned to normality for the local community.
All three services work within the national gold (strategic), silver (tactical) and bronze (operational) structure, with the police in overall control.
The three core functions of the police service have not changed since it began in 1829: the preservation of life, the prevention of crime and the detection and prosecution of offenders.
The ambulance and fire and rescue services’ role is right at the heart of an incident where there is an immediate threat of risk or harm to life.
It is the job of the police to provide a safe working environment for the other two services.
once the ambulance and fire and rescue services have left the scene of the incident, the investigation into the incident can begin.
Sgt Patrick Joyce (retired), Swansea.
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