Lee’s real life horror story!
QUESTION Did actor Christopher Lee witness the last public execution by guillotine in France? YES, a teenage Christopher Lee did witness France’s last public execution by guillotine in 1939.
Eugen Weidmann was born in Frankfurt in 1908 and embarked on a career as a petty criminal at an early age.
He moved to Paris in 1937 and became involved in a kidnap extortion ring that led to the deaths of several people, including American tourist and dancer Jean de Koven, 22; a governess; a chauffeur; a publicity agent; an estate agent and a man whom Weidmann had met as an inmate in a German prison.
The lowly station of many of the victims suggests money was not the motive.
Each was dispatched by Weidmann with a single shot to the back of the neck.
With his three accomplices, he was tracked down and following their trial, Weidmann, as the leader, was sentenced to death.
On June 17, 1939, he was beheaded outside the prison Saint-Pierre in Versailles.
Christopher Lee was 17 years old and staying in Paris with a friend of his family.
In his autobiography Lord Of Misrule, he relates: ‘The war correspondent Webb Miller took me to see the beheading of the murderer Eugen Weidmann in Versailles because he thought it important, with the war clouds gathering, that I see something of the world.
‘They rushed Weidmann to that extraordinary structure, so that his feet came off the ground. His hands were tied behind him and his head was held back.
‘They set him down by the plank and punched him in the stomach so that he fell forwards on to it, a strap went over his back, the plank tilted forward and the man they called The Photographer adjusted his head.
‘In that instant the knife fell, and I thought I would die myself.’
The Photographer was France’s chief executioner, Jules-Henri Desfourneaux.
Rather then react with solemn observance, the crowd rowdily jeered and shouted, with many using their handkerchiefs to ghoulishly dab up Weidmann’s blood as souvenirs.
The newspaper Paris-Soir denounced the crowd as ‘disgusting’, ‘unruly’, ‘jostling, clamouring, whistling’. Unknown to the authorities, photographs were taken and a film of the execution was shot from a private apartment next to the prison.
The hysterical behaviour of the spectators was so scandalous that French President Albert Lebrun immediately banned public executions.
They were carried out behind prison walls until the death penalty was abandoned in France in 1981. Jacob Reiss, London SW16. QUESTION Who devised the three-word address system, and how were the words chosen and distributed? THE what 3 words system divides the world into a grid of 3m x 3m squares, with each assigned a unique three-word address. The idea is that this is far simpler for emergency services and delivery vehicles to decipher than a string of numerical geographical co-ordinates.
For example, the torch of the Statue of Liberty is at ‘backs .pill. keen’ while ‘focal. issue. topic’ is Herbert Park, close to where the Irish Daily Mail offices are. These can be entered into the what 3 words app on a smartphone or computer to find a location. The idea was conceived after concert organiser Englishman Chris Sheldrick struggled to get equipment and bands to events on time due to inadequate addresses.
With a group of friends, he launched what 3 words in July 2013. The what 3 words language uses a list of 25,000 English words to cover the world’s landmass (40,000 are required for land and sea). They are sorted by an algorithm that takes into account word length, distinctiveness, frequency and ease of spelling and pronunciation.
Similar groups of words are not placed close to each other. For instance, ‘tables.c hair. lamp’ is an address on the outskirts of Minneapolis, Minnesota, while ‘table. chair. lamp’ is just south of Sydney.
Tom Brookshaw, Reading, Berks. QUESTION What is the Pareto principle? THE Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, states that 80% of failures stem from just 20% of possible causes. The catchphrase for this is ‘the vital few, not the trivial many’.
For example, in an exam paper, 80% of the incorrect answers are likely to come from just 20% of the questions. If you can identify those 20% of questions, you can improve teaching and the way exam questions are written.
The principle can be used to identify problems in industry by analysing if something is wrong with the production line machinery, raw materials or the way staff are trained, recruited, managed or paid. If root-cause analysis isn’t carried out, the tendency is to treat symptoms rather than causes.
After addressing the first set of 80/20 issues, the process is repeated, meaning that the number of quality failures is potentially decreased by 80% each time, until it is so small that it defies analysis.
The Pareto principle was popularised by Joseph Moses Juran, a Romanian-born American engineer who was a champion for the cause of quality management. In 1941, he discovered the work of the early 20th-century Italian statistician Vilfredo Pareto, who had first noted the 80/20 relationship, noting that 80% of land in Italy was owned by only 20% of the population. Bob Cubitt, Northampton. QUESTION What is the best genuine excuse you’ve heard for not handing in homework? WHILE I was lecturing at our local college, one apprentice came in late. His excuse? He was knocked off his bicycle by an aircraft! The homework was lost in the accident. I did not wait for details as the class were working hard. When it came time for the class to close, two airmen turned up asking for the said apprentice.
It seems they were taking the main body of a light bomber in a trailer to Chivenor in North Devon, when the body moved and a tail fin knocked the lad off.
They took him to Chivenor for a medical check-up before delivering him to college, then arranged to repair his bike and collect him when his classes ended. I was glad I did not blast him at the time – his excuse was so way out, there had to be some truth in it. Mike Bennett, Barnstaple, Devon.
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