And Finally...

Nick Robinson tripped up over the shadow chancellor’s name on BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme – and hilariously didn’t even realise he’d done it.

The BBC presenter became the latest journalist to make the infamous gaffe on Friday morning, slipping up as he grilled Alison McGovern, the employment minister, on welfare cuts ahead of the Budget.

“The Tories announced £12 billion in welfare cuts, and at the time, the Labour Party condemned that,” he said.

“They said that Rishi Sunak, Jeremy Cunt, had no idea where they get the money.”

Robinson later apologies for the slip-up, saying he repeated what was known as the Jim Naughtie error in his last interview

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Mr Naughtie, a former Today programme presenter, famously made the blunder during an interview with Mr Hunt in 2010, with many others since falling into the foul-mouthed trap

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/18925839

Good news! Following up from this https://feddit.uk/post/18671151

David Jakins, 82, known as "King Conker", won the tournament in Southwick, Northamptonshire, last Sunday for the first time after competing since 1977.

But his long-awaited victory was marred when a cheating scandal erupted after a fake steel conker, painted brown, was later found in the veteran competitor's pocket.

His opponent in the final Alastair Johnson-Ferguson told The Daily Telegraph he raised concerns after his conker "disintegrated in one hit, and that just doesn't happen".

The chairman of the organising committee said the steel conker was indistinguishable from a real one, with its weight the only giveaway.

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"The investigation has found no evidence that the steel conker was used. King Conker has been cleared of suspicion, and his name is being engraved on the trophy."

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Mr Jakins won the men's competition but lost in the overall final to women's champion Kelci Banschbach, originally from the United States, who only took up the game last year when she moved to Suffolk.

The championships have been held since 1965 and organisers say they have raised £420,000 for charity.

Alex Lang was flying his motored paraglider around the Great Pyramid in Egypt when he saw something odd in the distance.

Intrigued, the adventurer moved in for a closer look.

When he was finally able to make out the mysterious figure, it was the last thing he was expecting- a dog that had somehow made its way to the apex of the 455ft structure to bark at 'birds’.

Viewers were impressed by the dog but were all left with the same question after watching the video: how did it get up there?

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However, while some might like to follow in the footsteps of the dog, humans are banned from climbing to the top. Offenders could face up to three years in prison, and in 2016, a teenager was banned from visiting Egypt again after making the ascent.

A children’s soft play centre has removed its hanging “body bag” Halloween decorations after concerns were raised by parents.

Rugrats and Halfpints in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, has apologised over the objects resembling human corpses covered in black plastic.

Some appeared to be wrapped with tape bearing the words “caution” and “danger” and were hanging upside down from poles adjoining one of the soft play structures, according to pictures posted online.

A TikToker has sparked a debate after claiming to have driven up the UK's steepest hill, where he alleges 10 people fail every day. The user, known as DavetheDriver, shared a video of his journey through Oakamoor, a village in Staffordshire, en route to Alton Towers theme park.

The footage shows Dave navigating a steep road after passing the Cricketer's Arms pub. As he continues, it becomes evident that the challenging stretch of road extends for quite a distance.

Throughout his ascent, Dave encounters several tight bends and corners with limited visibility of oncoming traffic. "This is the steepest road in the UK," he claimed in the video's caption, adding, "At least 10 cars every day fail to make it to the top,".

Since being posted on TikTok on Friday, September 27, the clip has garnered over 3.3 million views and approximately 143,800 likes. It's one of many videos Dave has shared on his account, with others accumulating over 1 million views in total.

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However, not everyone agreed with Dave's claim about the hill's steepness. Several commenters suggested that either Sutton Bank in North Yorkshire or Porlock Hill in Somerset holds the title for the steepest hill in the UK.

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In addition, Matthew chipped in with skepticism commenting, "When does it get steep? That's just a normal Scottish road."

Porlock Hill has been noted as the UK's steepest A-road boasting gradients of 25 per cent in some parts. The hill ascends roughly 725 feet in less than a mile.

A man says he is lucky to be alive after being attacked by a “sexually frustrated” dolphin which experts believe is responsible for terrorising a Japanese town all summer.

Takuma Goto had been swimming off the town of Tsuruga in central Japan with a friend earlier this summer when they were attacked by a lone dolphin.

Experts believe a single dolphin, which may be sexually frustrated, could be responsible for at least 15 attacks on swimmers in Fukui this summer, up from five incidents last summer and one in 2022.

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“I knew it was not a shark, but it came straight at me,” he said, adding that he did nothing to attract or antagonise the dolphin, but that it nonetheless began a sustained assault.

A surfer eventually came to Mr Goto’s rescue as onlookers watched in horror from the beach. Once he was ashore, he washed the bite wounds with water. “The insides of my finger were popping out,” he said, and was taken to a nearby hospital.

The 23-year-old, who works in financial sales, was left with a massive gash on his left index finger, which required five stitches, as well as bite wounds to his left wrist and forearm and his right hand and upper arm.

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Experts also believe the dolphin may be sexually frustrated following reports in other incidents that it attempted to press its genitals against its victims.

“Bottlenose dolphins are highly social animals and this sociality can be expressed in very physical ways,” Dr Simon Allen, a biologist and principal investigator with the Shark Bay Dolphin Research project, told the BBC.

“Just as in humans and other social animals, hormonal fluctuations, sexual frustration or the desire to dominate might drive the dolphin to injuring the people it interacts with. Since they are such powerful animals, this can lead to serious injury in humans.”

Archive

A book borrowed from a school library before the first world war has finally been returned – more than a century overdue.

A copy of Poetry of Byron was found by a man in Carmarthenshire, south Wales, who felt it should be returned to St Bees School, near Whitehaven, Cumbria, where it had been lent out to a schoolboy.

Inside the blue clothbound book the name Leonard Ewbank is written, along with the date 25 September 1911. Ewbank, who was born in 1893, was a pupil of St Bees between 1902 and 1911, before going on to study at Queen’s College, Oxford.

Records show that, despite his poor eyesight, he was recruited to the 15th Border Regiment in 1915 to fight in the first world war. He was killed in battle on 23 February 1916 by a bullet to the head and is buried at the Railway Dugouts burial ground in Ypres, Belgium, a cemetery that contains the graves of 2,463 troops.

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Ewbank is commemorated on the school’s roll of honour as “an Englishman, brave, honest and loyal”.

The school was “honoured” to have the book returned, said the headteacher, Andrew Keep. Keep told the BBC: “It’s incredible to think that a piece of St Bees’ history has found its way back to us after all these years.”

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The book, featuring the work of Lord Byron, a Romantic poet famously described as “mad, bad and dangerous to know”, is not the first to be returned to a library after spending a lifetime elsewhere, but it could be one of the most overdue library books of all time.

In May, a book borrowed from a library in Helsinki was returned 84 years overdue. A Finnish translation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s historical novel The Refugees had been due on 26 December 1939, a month after the Soviet invasion of Finland, so it “might not have been the first thing on the borrower’s mind”, said Heini Strand, a librarian at Helsinki’s Oodi central library.

In July, Canoe Building in Glass-Reinforced Plastic by Alan Byde was returned to Orkney Library more than 47 years late, after being found during a house clearance. The library’s John Peterson said: “Fortunately we don’t charge overdue fines.”

In a country where polygamy is illegal, a man with four wives and two girlfriends is aiming to give birth to 54 children and become the "god of marriage" eventually.

The 36-year-old man, Ryuta Watanabe, lives in the northern prefecture of Hokkaido in Japan. He has not been working for the last 10 years and has living on the salaries earned by his wives and girlfriends.

As reported by Shueisha Online, Watanabe already has 10 children and has been living with two of them and three of his wives.

He has stepped into the role of househusband and does all the housework, cooking and takes care of the children.

The household expenses which are around $6,000 every month get split between his wives and girlfriends.

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Watanabe said his aim is to break the record of fathering the highest number of children in Japan and gaining the title of so-called "God of Marriage".

As per records, Tokugawa Ienari - who was a shogun and died in 1841 - had fathered nearly 53 children with 27 concubines in his reign in the Edo Period.

“I want to have 54 children so my name will go down in history. I’m still looking for new wives," Watanabe said.

BERLIN (AP) — A brand-new fire station in Germany, which was destroyed in a fire, causing millions of euros in damage and destroyed equipment did not have a fire alarm system, local media reported Thursday.

The fire broke out early Wednesday morning at the Stadtallendorf fire station in Hesse and destroyed, among other things, the equipment hall and almost a dozen emergency vehicles, German news agency dpa reported. Initial estimates put the damage at between 20 million and 24 million euros ($21 million to $26 million). No one was injured.

Local officials told dpa that no fire alarm system was installed in the building because experts had considered it not necessary — much to the astonishment of many observers now that the station has burned down...

A man has been discovered to have two extra penises by medical students dissecting his body, marking only the second time ever someone has been found to have three penises.

This incredibly rare triple penis phenomenon was found by students at the University of Birmingham Medical School in the U.K. during a dissection of a 78-year-old man who had donated his body to science, according to a new paper in the publication Journal of Medical Case Reports.

According to the researchers, the man may never have known he had three penises.

This condition, known as triphallia, was only seen in a human for the very first time in 2020 in a newborn, and is thought to affect one in every 5 to 6 million live births.

"Triphallia, a rare congenital anomaly describing the presence of three distinct penile shafts, has been reported only once in the literature," the researchers wrote in the new paper. "Without dissection, this anatomical variation would have remained undiscovered, suggesting the prevalence of polyphallia may be greater than expected."

Having two penises, known as diphallia, has been seen in around 100 human cases, and occurs once in every 5.5 million live births. Usually, doctors remove the extra penises at birth if they are externally visible, but they are often left alone or go unnoticed entirely if hidden inside the body.

The 78-year-old man appeared to have normal genitals externally, but once his penis was dissected, the students discovered two other tiny duplicate penises hidden inside his scrotum.

Here are some words you never expected to read: Greggs champagne bar. But the no-frills baker’s latest marketing stunt is a pop-up bar where its famous bakes will be served with £75-a-glass champagne in bespoke sausage roll-etched coupes.

The “reservation-only” Greggs champagne bar, which claims to be “inspired by 1920s Paris wine bars”, opens next week in the Newcastle branch of Fenwick. The Christmas pop-up in the department store’s food hall seats 16 customers around a curved bar, with guests encouraged to ring vintage crystal bells for a refill of Louis Roederer Cristal, which costs £425 a bottle.

Greggs, which is headquartered in Newcastle, said its first-ever champagne bar paired its “iconic savoury menu of bakes and rolls” with handpicked bubbles served by the glass or bottle from famous names such as Bollinger and Laurent Perrier. It claims to be the only place in the area offering the exclusive champagne menu “by the glass”.

Mercifully, the food is cheaper at under £5 for a main. In keeping with Greggs’ affordable ethos, there are cheaper bubbles to pair with a cheese and onion bake, such as a £10 glass of Ca di Alte prosecco or an £11 “pink jammie fizz” – a prosecco-based cocktail inspired by Greggs’ jam doughnuts.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/18671151

Metal replica conker found in pocket of David Jakins AKA King Conker, first-time winner after competing since 1977

A Nottinghamshire man has become so frustrated with drivers speeding down his road that he plans to suit up as Deadpool to stop them. Mark Spaven, 59, says motorists have been whizzing down Cavendish Drive in Carlton for years and his cat, Groot, was struck and killed by a suspected speeding driver two weeks ago.

Now, feeling as though his complaints to the council have fallen on deaf ears, the self-confessed Marvel aficionado plans to take to the street as comic book anti-hero Deadpool - but promises not to chop anybody's heads off. "I'm going to be going up and down dressed as Deadpool," said Mr Spave, who has a hand-made 'slow down please' sign.

A former Countdown champion who is accused of stabbing a fellow contestant at an event for past competitors of the game show is set to stand trial. John Cowen, 30, appeared in Preston Crown Court facing charges of Section 18 wounding and possession of a bladed article, following allegations he attacked Thomas Carey at the Countdown in Blackpool 2024 event last month.

Emergency services were called to Hornby Road at 11.35am on September 14, 2024, following reports of an assault. Mr Carey was hospitalised and Cowen was arrested on suspicion of wounding with intent and knife possession.

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Both men are understood to have been attending the annual event for winners of the popular Channel 4 TV show prior to the alleged attack. In 2017, Cowen featured in 12 episodes of the daytime quiz show, winning eight consecutive contests and earning the sought-after title of 'octochamp'.

He also achieved the third highest total of the entire series, identifying the nine-letter word 'spreading'. He competed in the Series 77 finals in December 2017, but lost to Bradley Horrocks in the semi-final, reports Lancs Live.

He was defeated by Horrocks again in the quarter-final of the Championship of Champions XV series in 2019.

Context, probably, at least in my head

A woman has questioned if she was in the wrong for telling a stranger that she had been pronouncing her own daughter's name incorrectly. The unnamed woman took to Reddit to detail the incident.

An annual event involving dirt, beer and cash once again drew dozens of eager competitors to a ski resort in Maine on Saturday.

More than 30 couples competed in the North American Wife Carrying Championship, a 278-yard (254-meter) race during which contestants splash through water, leap over logs and trudge through mud — all while carrying their partner like a sack of potatoes.

The sport’s origin story isn’t exactly politically correct. It's based on a 19th century Finnish legend involving a man known as “Ronkainen the Robber,” whose gang was known to pillage villages and carry away the women, according to one of the explanations included on the website wife-carrying.org.

Traditionally, the Finnish event featured male competitors carrying a woman. On Saturday, competing couples didn’t have to be married, nor did they have to be a man and a woman.

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The champion leaves with the weight of the “wife” in beer and five times the “wife's” weight in cash. To estimate the amount they win, the winning “wife” is put on one side of a see-saw-like scale that organizers balance out on the other side with cases of beer.

A UK court has ruled that calling a man “bald” can be considered sexual harassment. The ruling stems from a case involving Tony Finn, a former employee of the British Bung Company, who sued the West Yorkshire-based firm for sexual harassment after an offensive remark was made by a supervisor.

Tony Finn, an electrician, had worked at the British Bung Company for nearly 24 years before being dismissed in May 2021. Following his dismissal, Finn took legal action against the company, alleging unfair dismissal and sexual harassment, with one of his key complaints being the derogatory comments made about his baldness.

The harassment incident occurred during a heated argument on the shop floor, where Jamie King, a factory supervisor, called Mr. Finn a “bald cunt”. Offended by the personal nature of the remark, Mr. Finn pursued legal action, claiming the comment was not just an insult, but sexual harassment.

In February 2022, an Employment Tribunal ruled in favor of Mr. Finn, agreeing that the baldness-related comment constituted sexual harassment. Mr. Finn also won claims of unfair dismissal and wrongful termination.

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In November 2023, the Employment Appeals Tribunal, overseen by Mrs. Justice Naomi Ellenbogen DBE, dismissed the company’s appeal. Justice Ellenbogen concluded that the comment was “inherently related to sex” and that baldness, particularly in men, is often used as a point of ridicule linked to masculinity.

“The remarks about Mr. Finn’s baldness were directed specifically at his appearance and masculinity, making the comment inherently related to his sex,” said Justice Ellenbogen in the court’s ruling.

A woman who sued her former employer over not being given a leaving card lost her case when it was revealed it had been hidden from her after only three people signed it.

Karen Conaghan claimed that the “failure to acknowledge her existence” at IAG, the parent company of British Airways, was a breach of equality law.

However, a former colleague told an employment tribunal that managers had indeed bought a card but did not present it to Conaghan because of the low number of signatures, the Times reported.

The judge, Kevin Palmer, said: “He believed it would have been more insulting to give her the card than not to give her a card at all.”

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Conaghan, a former business liaison lead, brought 40 complaints against the company for sexual harassment, victimisation and unfair dismissal. But the tribunal dismissed every claim, with Palmer concluding that Conaghan, who started working at the company in 2019, had adopted a “conspiracy-theory mentality”, mistaking “normal workplace interactions” for harassment.

In one claim, she said a colleague had copied her use of the word “whiz” in a card for a colleague, but corrected her spelling by writing “whizz” instead.

She said another employee had asked her: “Are you taking the piss, Karen?” The tribunal heard that this was after Conaghan suggested she had “done all of the hard work” and it was his “turn to do some”.

Conaghan moved to Richmond, North Yorkshire, in September 2021 despite it being expected that all employees live within two hours of the office in Heathrow, the tribunal heard. She was made redundant in the same year as part of a restructuring of the organisation, with colleagues saying in evidence that many people also left around the same time.

King Charles III had no idea what cling film was and “shrieked” the first time he saw it, an author has claimed in an unauthorised biography which detailed a selection of interesting stories about our new monarch.

Author Tom Bower said he interviewed over 120 people for his biography of Charles, entitled ‘Rebel Prince’.

The book delves into Charles’s struggles to overcome unpopularity, and includes some pretty unexpected tales along the way.

Explaining how the royal reportedly had his first encounter with cling film, Bower wrote: “He walked into the dining room and shrieked. Fearing the worst, Camilla dashed in after him. ‘What’s this?’ asked her husband, pointing at the food.

“’It’s cling film, darling,’ she replied.”

In 1921, German composer Paul Hindemith sought to debut his one-act opera Sancta Susanna, which explores a nunnery's descent into sexual frenzy, at the prestigious Stuttgart Opera.

But outrage over its allegedly blasphemous text, which one critic at the time called a "desecration of our cultural institutions", forced the premiere to be postponed until the following year at the Oper Frankfurt.

Now, over a century later, Stuttgart’s State Opera has brought a radical-feminist reinterpretation of Hindemith's work to life with Sancta, directed by the avant-garde choreographer Florentina Holzinger.

And so far, its proven to be anything but your typical night at the opera...

There have been only two performances since its Stuttgart premiere on 5 October, but 18 theatregoers have reportedly required medical treatment for severe nausea following the show.

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In short, the opera is nearly three-hours of uninterrupted batshit craziness.

On stage, naked nuns roller skate around on a movable half-pipe, while a bouldering wall of crucified naked bodies dripping blood looms in the background. To add to this chaos, there are live piercings, crucifix swallowing acts, unsimulated sex scenes and a sprinkle of spanking thrown in for good measure.

One particularly unforgettable moment sees an actress with dwarfism dressed as the Pope, being spun around by a robotic arm, while another features an actress belting out Eminem tracks while dressed as Jesus (because why not?).

For a taste of the mayhem, please check out this trailer.

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Archbishop of Salzburg Franz Lackner described the show as “seriously offensive to believers’ religious feelings and convictions”.

The opera's Austrian choreographer Holzinger has made a name for herself, with past productions that have incorporated elements of pain, nudity, body horror, acrobatics, sword-swallowers and Japanese bondage artists.

“This is an opera about the breaking forth of the repressed female libido, so we decided to have a lot of fun," the 38-year-old dancer told The Guardian earlier this year.

Despite reports of more than a dozen attendees falling ill, all five remaining shows at the Stuttgart state opera, as well as two performances at Berlin’s Volksbühne in November, have completely sold out.

Ismail Tamar, 41, with an address at South Circular Road, was charged with assault causing harm to Mouro Di Dio on Wednesday.

Mr Tamar, who moved to Ireland from Afghanistan, appeared before Judge Monika Leech at Dublin District Court.

Garda James Butler alleged Mr Di Dio suffered ligament damage to one of his hands when he tried to protect himself. He claimed Mr Tamar attempted to strike him with a wooden stick, and Mr Di Dio also put up his leg to protect himself but had one of his shoes taken by the defendant.

The court heard they lived in neighbouring flats, but there had been a deterioration in their relationship and several incidents where the complainant and his wife suffered abuse at the hands of Mr Tamar.

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Mr Di Dio told the bail hearing that the defendant had been banging on his door and walls every night and that he had recorded incidents.

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Mr Di Dio rejected the defence suggestion that “it is because he snores very loudly, and you would have been complaining to him about his snoring.”

Archive

Robot vacuums in multiple US cities were hacked in the space of a few days, with the attacker physically controlling them and yelling obscenities through their onboard speakers.

A Labour MP has launched a campaign to cut the price of Freddo chocolate bars to 5p.

Patrick Hurley, who represents Southport, has said he set up a petition after speaking to students at a school in his constituency.

Announcing the move on social media, he said: "20 pence for a Freddo is too much, especially in a cost of living crisis".

The 18g Cadbury chocolate bar was originally introduced to the UK in the 1973 and then relaunched in 1994 when it cost 10p.

For over a decade, the price of a Freddo stuck at 10p, not rising with inflation.

Since the mid 2000s the price started to rise and costs currently stand at around 30p.

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Hurley told the BBC he was inspired to launch his campaign after speaking to students at a local school in his constituency.

"The girls were very clued-up about political issues, including assisted dying and the Middle East."

However, he said one of the students also asked if he could launch a petition to cut Freddo bars to 5p.

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The Southport MP added that since announcing the campaign he had "learnt more about Freddos than any person should".

A Kentucky woman was arrested after police found dismembered body parts partially cooked in her home.

The gruesome discovery was made by a man who had been hired to work on Trudy Fields’ home in Mount Olivet on Wednesday.

When the worker arrived at the property he couldn’t find the homeowner but then came across a dismembered body in the backyard, authorities said. At first, he thought the remains were Fields’ and called the Kentucky State Police.

Officers attended the property and found a woman’s body on a blood-stained mattress. Troopers then spotted a second blood-stained mattress that had been dragged toward the back of the house, according to the Louisville Courier Journal, citing an incident report.

After discovering another woman inside the house, troopers attempted to speak with her, but she allegedly refused to acknowledge them or allow them entry, forcing them to procure search warrants.

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SRT members were eventually forced to remove Fields from her home, but they reportedly did so without incident. After taking her into custody, troopers discovered that parts had been removed from the body outside and were stuffed into a folded-up mattress.

When troopers finally took Fields into custody, she had blood on her face, hands, and clothing. They entered her house and reportedly found a stainless steel pot contained body parts that appeared to have been cooked in an oven. Troopers noted in their findings that the pot was hot to the touch.

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The construction worker who discovered the body told troopers that Fields had been on the property during one of his previous visits and had been “casting spells on them and was being confrontational”.

A 300-year-old gravestone commemorating a woman who was mauled to death by a tiger has been restored.

Hannah Twynnoy was living in Malmesbury in the 18th Century when the animal, thought to have been part of a travelling menagerie housed in a pub yard, escaped and attacked her.

Her gruesome death, aged just 33, has attracted visitors to her grave in the grounds of Malmesbury Abbey ever since.

The inscription on her headstone had become so illegible that, prompted by a local campaign, masonry restorers were brought in to spruce it up.

Hannah Twynnoy was working as a servant in the White Lion Inn when she died on 23 October 1703.

Believed to be the first person to be killed by a tiger in England, the exact nature of her death is unknown as nothing was written about it until about 100 years later.

However, according to local history, the pub accommodated wild beasts for exhibition, one of which was a tiger.

Despite being told regularly not to tease the animals, it is believed that Hannah taunted the tiger, which lunged at her, pulled its fixing from the wall and "tore her to pieces".