Welcome back – it’s #NationalTriviaDay
Welcome back to school, OppNottsers! We hope you had a great Christmas and wonderful new year,wherever you were celebrating it. We were obviously watching the amazing fireworks at the Castle! We thought we’d ease you back in gently to another year of awesome challeneges and the like by do a special blog for today’s #NationalTriviaDay (today is also #NationalSpaghettiDay which really shows you that when it comes to days and hashtags, the pastabilities are endless!). Bad jokes aside here’s our It’s From Nottingham trivia top 10, because it’s not just Robin Hood we’re famous for.
10. The Video Cassette Recorder
Nowadays it’s pretty easy to record your favourite TV shows, but the technology is less than 50 years old. The first VCR was invented in Nottingham, and was called the Telcan or ‘television in a can’, cost £60 and could record 20 minutes in black and white.
9. HP Sauce
The debate about red or brown sauce on a bacon sandwich might not exist if it weren’t for shopkeeper Frederick Gibson Garton. He came up with the recipe for the famous sauce in his grocery shop in New Basford.
8. Tarmac
Hardly the most fascinating thing on the list, but perhaps the most widely used. Notts county surveyor Edgar Hooley was passing a tarworks in 1901 when he noticed a barrel of tar had been spilled and, to reduce the mess, someone had dumped gravel on it. A year later he patented the process and the first road to be tarmaced was in West Bridgford.
7. Traffic lights
It’s pretty hard to imagine a time without traffic lights, but after seeing thousands killed on the roads in 1866, Nottingham High School pupil John Peake Knight set about trying to solve the problem. The system has a revolving gas-powered lantern with a red and a green light with the first one placed near the House of Commons in London.
6. Goose Fair
Every October, the Forest Rec is taken over with rides and food stands for Goose Fair. With thousands flocking from across the country and further afield, it’s easily one of the finest things Nottingham has to offer. The rest of the world, you’re welcome.
5. MRI
A University of Nottingham professor revolutionised medicine. The first MRI machine was only big enough to fit a finger in, but they grew in size and popularity and are now widely used by doctors looking at brain tumours, Parkinson’s and strokes.
4. Torvill and Dean
Twenty-four million people watched that moment when Torvill and Dean cemented their position in history with a flawless routine to Ravel’s Bolero. Their perfect 6.0s puts them at number four in our list.
3. Paul Smith
It all could have been so different. Paul Smith left school at 14 with the aim of becoming a professional cyclist, but after a nasty accident, he then picked up a career in fashion. Years later, he is now one of the most famous names in fashion.
2.Ibuprofen
A cure for all sorts of aches and pains, it’s clear why ibuprofen is seen as a wonder drug. And it was made right here in Nottingham by Dr Stewart Adams. He even admitted in 2007 that he tested his creation out on a hangover and millions have found out it works since.
1.Raleigh bikes
If there is one brand that is Nottingham to a T, it has to be Raleigh. Thousands were employed at the factories in Triumph Road, immortalised in Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Thousands more have had the pleasure of riding round on a Chopper, Max or any of the other bikes it put out. The last bike with ‘Made in Nottingham’ on the frame rolled off the production line in 2002, but a design and distribution centre still exists in Eastwood.
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