Gongs in the line of duty
QUESTION What are the medals worn by Met Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick?
The four medals worn by Dame Cressida Dick are the Queen’s Police Medal (QPM), the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal and the Police Long Service and Good Conduct Medal.
Suspended from a miniature ribbon around her neck is the insignia of a Dame Commander of the Order of the British empire (DBE).
The Queen’s Police Medal is awarded for distinguished police service and is so inscribed around the circumference on the reverse of the medal.
The Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal was awarded to all serving police officers with at least five years’ service on February 6, 2002, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Queen’s accession.
Similarly, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal was awarded on February 6, 2012, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Queen’s accession.
The Police Long Service and Good Conduct Medal is awarded to police officers for 20 years’ service.
Michael Hemingway, Belton-in-Rutland, E. Mids.
QUESTION What was the largest arthropod to have ever lived?
ARTHROPODS are animals without a backbone (invertebrates). Instead they have external skeletons with multiplejointed appendages.
examples include insects, arachnids (spiders, daddy longlegs, scorpions, mites and ticks), myriapods (centipedes and millipedes) and crustaceans.
It might be argued that the Japanese spider crab (Macrocheira kaempferi) is the largest arthropod to have ever lived as specimens have been known to span 12.5 ft from one front claw to the other.
however, its body was less than a foot long and there were far larger creatures roaming the earth before the dinosaurs.
eurypterids — so-called sea scorpions, a name based on their appearance, though many were freshwater — appeared at the beginning of the Ordovician Period 488 million years ago. They disappeared at the end of the great Permian extinction 252 million years ago.
The largest known example was Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, meaning Otto Jaekel’s wing from the rhineland. It was named after the German palaeontologist who discovered the species in 1914.
he classified it as Pterygotus rhenaniae, but it was renamed in 2007 by Simon Braddy and Markus Poschmann of the University of Bristol after they found a 46 cm chelicera (claw-like mouth part) in Germany. They estimated the size of their animal to be 8.2 ft long and weighing up to a third of a ton. When extended, the chelicerae would have added a further 3 ft to its length.
Jaekelopterus came from the early Devonian Period 400 million years ago and probably lived and hunted in freshwater rather than the sea.
Another candidate as the largest ever arthropod was the giant millipede Arthropleura, from the Greek for jointed ribs. Fossilised remains from North America and footprints in Scotland suggest this animal could grow to 8 ft. Its armoured skeleton suggests it might have weighed as much as half a ton.
It’s thought a lack of predators and the high oxygen levels of the Carboniferous Period 300 million years ago, which peaked at 35 per cent of the atmosphere compared to 21 per cent today, accounted for their size. There were insects flying around the forests at the time that were ten times larger than today’s critters.
Arthropleura became extinct when the moist climate began drying out, resulting in the desertification of the Permian Period.
Dr Ian Smith, Cambridge.
QUESTION Who was the original hooligan?
hOOLIGAN is thought to be a take on the Irish surname houlihan, which was used as a comic name in music halls and newspapers in the 1880s.
The term was made famous by the song The hooligans, performed by the Irish comedians Jim O’Connor and Charles Brady as two roistering boys called Bill Jinks and Bob Buster:
‘Oh, the hooligans!/Oh, the hooligans!/ Always on the riot,/Cannot keep them quiet,/Oh, the hooligans!/Oh, the hooligans!/They are the boys,/To make a noise,/In our backyard.’
It was popularised by The hooligans, a cartoon family of Irish immigrants who appeared on the cover of the comic journal Nuggets in 1897.
Drawn by T.S. Baker and captioned with strong Irish accents, the hooligan family displayed buffoonish behaviour that was juxtaposed against the properness of english culture. This stereo-typical representation of urban immigrants demonstrated the prejudices of London life in the late Victorian era.
The word hooligan crossed over to describe gangs of rowdy youths during the scorching summer of 1898. They were thrust into the headlines in the wake of a turbulent August Bank holiday celebration in London that saw widespread drunkenness and brawling.
Contemporary reports from the Daily News said: ‘It is no wonder . . . that hooligan gangs are bred in these vile, miasmatic byways . . . The constable said the prisoner belonged to a gang of young roughs, calling themselves hooligans.’
The term was adopted as a badge of honour by street gangs in the same way as teddy boy, mod or skinhead.
The label football hooligan began to appear in the media in the mid-1960s long after the first recorded instance of this behaviour. In 1885, when Preston North end played Aston Villa at home, both teams were attacked by spectators with sticks, stones, punches and kicks.
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