First behind the wheel
QUESTION Who owns the world’s oldest original car?
THERE are several candidates for the oldest car, most of which are in museums.
The earliest self-propelled machine still in existence is the Cugnot Steam Tractor. Built by French military engineer Nicolas Joseph Cugnot in 1769, it was intended to take cannon and artillery to battlefields.
A 2.5-tonne, three-wheeled vehicle, it could carry four passengers, had a top speed of 4kph and its boiler needed constant maintenance. It can be seen at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris – and it still works!
The London Steam Carriage of 1803 and Hancock Steam Coach of 1832 are known to have existed, but the next surviving vehicle is the 1875 Grenville Steam Carriage. Built by Robert Neville Grenville and George Jackson Churchward, this twin-cylinder engine has a top speed of 30kph. It can carry seven people: the driver, steersman, four passengers and a fireman.
The three-wheeled vehicle completed the 57-mile (92km) London to Brighton Veteran Car Run in 2000. It burned 500lb of coal and used 200 gallons of water. It can be seen at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu, Hampshire, southeast England.
Guinness World Records says the next oldest is the first true car: La Marquise, a steam-powered, four-wheeled, four-seater vehicle, made by De Dion Bouton et Trepardoux of France in 1884.
It was owned by Count de Dion and named after his mother. In 1887, it won the world’s first automobile race, averaging 26kph along the 32km from Pont de Neuilly, Paris, to Versailles. However, it was the only entrant!
As the oldest car, it had the number ‘0’ in the 1996 London to Brighton Veteran Car Run. It is fuelled by coal, wood and paper, takes 30 minutes to warm up and can hit 62kph. It was sold to a US collector for $4.63million in 2011.
The Benz Patent-Motorwagen (patent motorcar), built in 1885 by the German Carl Benz, was the first practical automobile. It had a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine and was the first car put into series production, changing human mobility forever. MkI was rather fragile – a threewheeled, rear-engined carriage powered by a 0.95-litre engine providing 0.6bhp. It is said to have reached 14kph.
Benz improved the vehicle and in 1888 his wife Bertha made the first long-distance trip in automobile history, travelling 105km between Mannheim and Pforzheim in the MkIII. It had a 2hp engine and a top speed of 16kph.
Justin Marshall, Coventry.
QUESTION How many capitals has Scotland had?
SCOTLAND has had two official capitals: Scone and Edinburgh. But several other places can lay some claim to the title. When Scotland coalesced around a single king, Kenneth MacAlpin, in the ninth century, the centre of power did not. Early Scottish kings travelled around their kingdom to visit key locations.
Meetings of parliaments, general councils and exchequers occurred when and where the king chose to hold them. Stirling, Dunfermline, Falkland and Inverness were all centres of Scottish power.
Most historians agree that Scone, in Perth and Kinross, was the first true capital.
The monarchy lived there from the ninth century and the parliament was based there from its formation in 1235. From the 1360s, most assemblies took place in Scone or Perth. David II held 15 gatherings at Scone between 1357 until his death in 1371.
A special mention must be made for Stirling. While Scone might have held legislative power, Stirling Castle was seen as ‘a brooch clasping Highlands and Lowlands together’. As the lowest bridging point of the Forth before it widens into the Firth of Forth, it was ideally situated to stop English armies from invading the Highlands. It is the site of Scotland’s most famous victories, from William Wallace at Stirling Bridge in 1297 to Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314.
By the time of the reign of James I, Perth had come to dominate the Scottish political landscape.
In 1437, the king was assassinated by conspirators led by his uncle, Walter Stewart, Earl of Atholl, who coveted the crown. They were swiftly captured and executed.
The throne then moved permanently to the stronghold of Edinburgh Castle.
James Murray, Stirling.
QUESTION With Nicholas Lyndhurst joining the Frasier reboot, which other British actors have appeared in American sitcoms?
HEAD Of The Class was a schoolbased US sitcom that ran from 1986 to 1991. When Howard Hesseman, who played laid-back teacher Charlie Moore, left, his unlikely replacement was Billy Connolly as Billy MacGregor.
The Big Yin was later given his own spin-off show called Billy. It lasted only one season.
Teri Hall, Staffordshire. THERE were two Britons in the original Frasier. Jane Leeves, who played Daphne Moon, housekeeper and love interest of Frasier’s brother Niles, was from Essex, but put on a broad Manchester accent.
John Mahoney, who played Frasier’s dad Martin Crane, was born in Blackpool and moved to the US when he was 18.
Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley had cameo roles in the sitcom Roseanne in 1996, playing their Ab Fab characters. In 1998, Saunders also appeared in Friends with another British actor, Tom Conti, as the parents of Emily, the second Mrs Ross Geller. Danny Darcy, Wiltshire.
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