Why Anne lost her head
QUESTION Did Anne Boleyn miscarry a deformed baby boy towards the end of her marriage to Henry Vlll?
In late January 1536, anne Boleyn, second queen of Henry VIII, suffered a miscarriage at Greenwich Palace. the nature of this has been shrouded in mystery ever since. tragically, if this were the son Henry craved, it might have preserved anne’s safety as queen.
She was beheaded just months later, on May 19, 1536. Her detractors accused her of infidelity, incest and witchcraft.
the rumour that the child was deformed may have circulated at the time, but written evidence for the accusation only appeared 50 years after anne’s death, when nicholas Sander (1530-1581) claimed she had given birth to ‘a shapeless mass of flesh’.
anne had probably become pregnant in mid-October 1535, when travelling with her husband on the annual summer progress. eustace Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador and chronicler of the period, wrote that: ‘On the day of the interment (the funeral of Catherine of aragon, January 29), the Concubine [anne] had an abortion [a miscarriage] which seemed to be a male child which she had not borne 3 ½ months, at which the King has shown great distress.’
It should be noted that Chapuys was one of anne’s chief detractors.
Sensational stories soon began circulating. according to Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria and confidante of Mary I, the miscarriage had begun after anne had found Henry with Jane Seymour, his mistress. anne reputedly said: ‘See, how well I must be since the day I caught that abandoned woman Jane sitting on your knees.’
It was Sander, a staunch Catholic who lived his life in exile on the Continent during the reign of elizabeth I, who had suggested the child was deformed, in england: Rise and Growth Of the anglican Schism, published posthumously in Cologne in 1585.
the book provided an extremely hostile portrait of anne: ‘anne Boleyn was rather tall of stature with black hair and an oval face of sallow complexion, as if troubled with jaundice. She had a projecting tooth under her upper lip, and on her right hand, six fingers. there was a large wen (tumour or wart) under her chin, and therefore to hide its ugliness, she wore a high dress covering her throat.’
Sander’s judgment was probably warped by his politics.
Suzanne Fry, Oxford.
QUESTION In nature, are fleas a main source of food for any other animal?
In BRItaIn, the flea species we are most aware of are probably dog fleas (Ctenocephalides canis) and cat fleas (Ctenocephalides felis). these are small, wingless insect pests of dogs, cats, humans and rats. Only adult fleas suck blood from their hosts.
Flea larvae consume faeces or decaying animal and plant matter.
While ladybirds and spiders will eat fleas, the only animals considered effective flea predators are the nematodes, Steinernema carpocapsae and Steinernema feltiae. erroneously called roundworms, these are multicellular insects with smooth, unsegmented bodies. When Steinernema nematodes are applied to sleeping area of dogs and cats, they search for, infect and kill all the soildwelling larval and pupal stages of fleas.
Generally, nematodes enter the body cavity and release symbiotic bacteria
called Xenorhabdus nematophila in the host’s blood that kill larva or pupa within 48 hours of infection.
M.S. Cotton, Cardiff.
QUESTION Were ‘chicken guns’ used to test aircraft windscreens?
tHey still are. a chicken gun is a largediameter, compressed-air gun used to fire bird carcasses at aircraft components in order to simulate high-speed bird strikes. the first device was built in 1942 at the Westinghouse electric and Manufacturing Company, Pittsburgh.
experimenters subjected windscreens to ‘such missiles as chickens and turkeys’. the cannon-like apparatus could fire a chicken at up to 400mph. the gun enabled Westinghouse to formulate a new bird-strike-resistant windscreen.
a similar gun was independently developed by the De Havilland aircraft Company at Hatfield in the mid 1950s.
Chicken guns are still used in north america. the arnold engineering Development Complex at arnold air Force Base in tennessee has one. It began using chicken guns during the Vietnam War, when aircraft flew at low altitude and pilots routinely encountered bird strikes.
the most sophisticated chicken guns can be found at the national Research Council of Canada’s Flight Impact Simulator facility in Uplands, Ottawa. It has two identical guns, known as ‘the twins’.
these 17ft-long guns feature a design that allows the team to fire different sizes of bird. In the late 1970s, a 2lb bird was fired at Mach 1.09, more than 800mph. there is a poster proclaiming the site as ‘Home of the World’s Fastest Chickens’.
Simon Webb, Malvern, Worcs. In 1952, I started work at the De Havilland aircraft factory in Hatfield as an apprentice. after a number of incidents involving bird strikes, a test facility was set up on the airfield. this consisted of a thick brick wall with a framework in front of it, to which could be attached sections of aircraft.
to avoid misfires, etc, a test chicken was fired at the wall without the test piece in place. Such was the power of the cannon that eventually the chickens blasted a hole through the brickwork. there was a line of trees behind the test area and I can still visualise them festooned with bits of chicken.
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