HUMOUR BOOK

The Egremont Crab Fair –  gets its name from crab apples rather than the marine variety. It started back in the 13th century when the Lord of the Manor gave away crab apples to the populace. Tto this day, the Parade of the Apple Cart, where apples are thrown into the crowds on the Main Street, is part of the fair.
Gurning, involves a rubber-faced skill that is totally bizarre and unique to this part of England. Contestants put their heads through horse collar or braffin while they create the ugliest, most grotesque faces they can manage. Celebrities occasionally have a go and the national news usually features the winning gurners. If you are in Cumbria visiting the Lake District, nearby, in September, stop in at the Egremont Crab Fair. You won’t see anything like this anywhere else.



Maypole dancing is a form of folk dance from western Europe, especially England, Sweden, Galicia, Germany and Portugal, with two distinctive traditions. In the most widespread, dancers perform circle dances around a tall pole which is decorated with garlands, painted stripes, flowers and other emblems. In the second form, dancers dance in a circle each holding a colored ribbon attached to a much smaller pole; the ribbons are intertwined and plaited either on to the pole itself or into a web around the pole.



Guy Fawkes Night , held on 5 November in the United Kingdom and some parts of the Commonwealth, is a commemoration of the plot, during which an effigy of Fawkes is burned, often accompanied by a fireworks. The word “guy”, meaning “person”, is derived from his name. Guy Fawkes (1570 – 1606), belonged to a group of Catholic Restorationists from England who planned the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Their aim was to displace Protestant rule by blowing up the Houses of Parliament while King James I and the entire Protestant, and even most of the Catholic, aristocracy and nobility were inside.
The Gunpowder Plot was led by Robert Catesby, but Fawkes was put in charge of its execution. He was arrested a few hours before the planned explosion, during a search of the cellars underneath Parliament in the early hours of November prompted by the receipt of an anonymous warning letter. Basically it’s a celebration of the failed attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament in Westminster.


Ascot Racecourse is a famous English racecourse, located in the small town of Ascot, Berkshire, used for thoroughbred horse racing. It is one of the leading racecourses in the United Kingdom, hosting 9 of the UK’s 32 annual Group 1 races, the same number as Newmarket.Ascot today stages twenty-five days of racing over the course of the year, comprising sixteen Flat meetings held in the months of May and October. The most prestigious race is the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes run over the course in July. What makes this so special is that every year the fashion, specifically the hats get bigger, bolder and damn right weirder as the photo illustrates.


Straw Bear Day is an old English tradition held on the 7th of January. It is known in a small area of Fenland on the borders of Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire, including Ramsey Mereside. This day is believed to be the start of agricultural year in England. A man wears a straw costume covering him from his head to toes. He goes from house to house where he dances and gets prizes in return.


Pearly Kings and Queens, known as pearlies, are an organized charitable tradition of working class culture in London, England. The practice of wearing clothes decorated with pearl buttons originated in the 19th century. In 1911 an organized pearly society was formed in Finchley, north London.


A Morris dance is a form of English folk dance. It is based on rhythmic stepping and the execution of choreographed figures by a group of dancers. Implements such as sticks, swords, and handkerchiefs may also be wielded by the dancers.



If any of you ever doubted that Brits are mad, this should make up your minds for you. Basically participants dive into a bog, wearing goggles, a pair of flippers and a snorkel, then they proceed to race each other along a 120ft trench filled with mud. Held every year the participants come from all over the world and raise lots of money for charity.




Worm charming is a way of attracting earthworms from the ground. Many do it to collect bait for fishing. But there are also those who do it as sort of sport or fun. The village of Willaston, near Nantwich, Cheshire is the place where since 1980 the annual World Championships have been organized. The competition was actually initiated by local man Tom Shufflebotham who on the 5th of July, 1980 charmed 511 worms from the ground in only half an hour. Each competitor have to competes in the 3 x 3 meters area. Music of any kind can be used to charm worms out of the ground.



The Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake is an annual event held on the Spring Bank Holiday at Cooper’s Hill near Gloucester in the Cotswolds region of England. It is traditionally by and for the people of Brockworth – the local village, but now people from all over the world take part. Due to the steepness and uneven surface of the hill there are usually a number of injuries, ranging from sprained ankles to broken bones and concussion. Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling has been summarized as “twenty young men chase a cheese off a cliff and tumble 200 yards to the bottom, where they are scraped up by paramedics and packed off to hospital”.

History is full with tales of people who, for all intents and purposes, inexplicably vanish from the face of the earth without any trace. Here's the list of top ten strange disappearances :

10. The Flannan Isles lighthouse keepers
In December 1900, three lighthouse keepers vanished from their duty stations, leaving behind equipment important to surviving the hostile conditions at that location and time of year. The official explanation for the disappearances is that the men were swept out to sea by a big freak wave.


Owen Parfitt had been paralyzed by a massive stroke. In June, 1763 in Shepton Mallet, England, Parfitt sat outside his sister’s home, as was often his habit on warm evenings. Across the road was a farm where people were doing their work. At about 7 p.m., Parfitt’s sister, Susannah, went outside with a neighbor to help Parfitt move back into the house, as a storm was approaching. But he was gone. Only his folded greatcoat upon which he sat remained. Investigations of this mysterious disappearance were carried out as late as 1933, but no trace or clues were found.


Between 1920 - 1950, Bennington, Vermont was the site of several unexplained disappearances:

British diplomat Benjamin Bathurst vanished into thin air in 1809. Bathurst was returning to Hamburg with a companion after a mission. Along the way, they had stopped for dinner at an inn in the town of Perelberg. After finishing the meal, they returned to their waiting horse-drawn coach. Bathurst’s companion watched as the diplomat stepped over to the front of the coach to examine to horses – and simply vanishedfrom there.


According to his narrative, Larch was on his way to collect water from a well one winter when he disappeared; leaving no trails of footprints in the snow which terminated abruptly, and a series of cries for help that appeared to come from above. One particular recurring citation of this variant was as Oliver Thomas of Rhayader, Radnorshire, mid-Wales and the date is given specifically as 1909.


Three soldiers claimed to be witnesses to the bizarre disappearance of an entire battalion in 1915. They finally came forward with the strange story 50 years after the infamous Gallipoli campaign of WWI. The three members of a New Zealand field company said they watched a battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment marched up a hillside in Suvla Bay, Turkey. The hill was shrouded in a low-lying cloud that the English soldiers marched straight into without hesitation. They never came out. After the last of the battalion had entered the cloud, it slowly lifted off the hillside to join other clouds in the sky. When the war was over, figuring the battalion had been captured and held prisoner, the British government asked Turkey to return them. The Turks insisted that it had not captured these English soldiers.


The mysterious standing stones of Stonehenge in England was the site of an amazing disappearance in August, 1971.One night, a group of “hippies” decided to pitch tents in the center of the circle and spend the night. They built a campfire, lit several joints of pot and sat around smoking and signing. Their campout was abruptly interrupted at about 2 a.m. by a severe thunder storm. Bright bolts of lightning crashed down on the area, striking area trees and the standing stones. Two witnesses, a farmer and a policeman, said that the stones of the ancient monument lit up with an eerie blue light that was so intense that they had to avert their eyes. They heard screams from the campers and the two witnesses rushed to the scene. To their surprise, they found no one. All that remained within the circle of stones were several smoldering tent pegs and the drowned remains of a campfire. The hippies too were gone without a trace.

In 1975, a man named Jackson Wright was driving with his wife from New Jersey to New York City. This required them to travel through the Lincoln Tunnel. According to Jackson Wright, once through the tunnel he pulled the car over to wipe the windshield of condensation. His wife Martha volunteered to clean off the back window. When Wright turned around, his wife was gone. He neither heard nor saw anything unusual take place, and a subsequent investigation could find no evidence.


This famous case allegedly took place in September, 1880 on a farm near Gallatin, Tennessee in full view of several witnesses. The two Lang children, George and Sarah, were playing in the front yard of the family home. Their parents, David and Emma, came out the front door, and David headed off across a pasture toward his horses. At this time, a buggy carrying family friend Judge August Peck was approaching. David turned to walk back to the house, saw the buggy and waved to the judge as he strode across the field. A few seconds later, David Lang , in clear view of his wife, his children and the judge disappeared.A thorough search by the family, friends and neighbors turned up nothing. A few months after the unexplained disappearance, the Lang children noticed that the grass on the spot where their father vanished had turned yellow and wilted in a circle measuring about 15 feet in diameter.


An individual that vanishes is one thing, but how about an entire village of 2,000 people? In November, 1930, a fur trapper named Joe Labelle made his way on snow shoes to an Eskimo village on the shores of Lake Anjikuni in northern Canada. Labelle was familiar with the village, which he knew as a thriving fishing community of about 2,000 residents. When he arrived, however, the village was deserted. All of the huts and storehouses were vacant.Labelle notified the authorities and an investigation was begun, which turned up some bizarre findings: no footprints of any of the residents were found, if they had vacated the village; all of the Eskimos’ sled dogs were found buried under a 12-foot-high snow drift – they had all starved to death. And there was one last unnerving discovery: the Eskimos’ ancestral graves had been emptied.

Fountains have been used since history  to add beauty and ambience to outdoor spaces.So , here's the list of top ten fantastic and beautiful fountains :


The Banpo Bridge fountain at 1140 meters long  is the worlds longest fountain. It has 380 nozzles that pump out 190 tons of water a minute.

2 .
Big Wild Goose Pagoda Music Fountain
Xian City, China
The Big Wild Goose Pagoda is the back drop of what claims to be the largest musical fountain in Asia with the longest light bar.Fire can also be seen at times shooting out of the holes.

3 .
La Joute Fountain
Montreal, Canada
Created by artist Jean Paul Riopelle in 1969, La Joute fountain is a kinetic sculpture fountain.


This is the tallest fountain in the world. Shooting water measures taller than the Eiffel tower minus the antennae. Water shoots out at 233 mph and reaches 1024 into the sky.

Castle Square Fountain
Swansea, Wales
There is nothing too remarkable about this fountain except during St. David’s Day when the Castle Square Fountain and the waterfall are dyed a deep red.Also Known as Blood Fountain.

Fontaine Des Innocents
Paris, France
Named for the cemetery site it was built on the Fontaine Des innocents was created by renaissance architect Pierre Lescot and sculpted by Jean Goujon. The fountain is decorated with plump little boys with wings common to the period.

Mercury Fountain
Barcelona, Spain
Created by Alexander Calder for the Spanish Republican government to memorialize the siege of Almaden.  Not knowing the effects of mercury, it was open to everyone. But now it can be viewed behind the glass.

Charybdis Fountain
Seaham Hall, Sunderland, UK
The Charybdis Fountain is a vortex fountain created by water artist William Pye. Encased in a clear plastic type polymer with an air-core vortex that rises every 15 minutes gives this fountain look of the water standing alone.

Fontana de Trevi
Rome, Italy
The Trevi Fountain is the considered the largest baroque style fountain. The fountain resided at the end of the Aqua Virgo aqueduct -which was built in 19 B.C. The fountain was designed to represent the many fluctuating moods of the sea. Neptune is the center of the fountain and he is flanked by tritons.

The Fountain of Wealth
Suntec City, Singapore
Located in the Suntec City Mall the fountain of wealth was created for luck using Feng Shui . The base is 16,831 sq. meters(approx. 55,219 sq. ft.) and stands about 30meters(1181 ft.) high.