Tour de France

[Greg_Dyke]

Robert Millar is 4 minutes clear

[StuThompson]

Not any more.

[chilled out entertainer]

arent robert, see pic and david who was in the lead by 4 minutes earlier, different millars?

[Stu M]

Glad to see the BBC perpetuating the old Bubonic Plague myth:

 

"1137: Gravesend - so called because it marked the end of the burial ground during The Great Plague of London (1665-6) - is having a much better time of it today. Fans are loving the David Millar show - he is two minutes ahead of four chasing riders and almost six minutes ahead of the peloton."

[Alan W (GNFC)]

He's now back in the pack.Thats where he finished but he did win the "King of the Mountains" (where do we have mountains in Kent???)!

[Slartibartfast]

Originally Posted By: Stu M

Glad to see the BBC perpetuating the old Bubonic Plague myth:

"1137: Gravesend - so called because it marked the end of the burial ground during The Great Plague of London (1665-6) - is having a much better time of it today. Fans are loving the David Millar show - he is two minutes ahead of four chasing riders and almost six minutes ahead of the peloton."

That really is p*ss poor research by the Beeb but unfortunately all too common these days, I wonder how they would explain the fact that Gravesend received its charter in 1268?......Dr Who perhaps.

[chris blanc]

From Wikipedia:

 

Robert H Hiscock, Chairman of the Gravesend Historical Society, in the foreword to his book, 'A History of Gravesend' (Phillimore, 1976) wrote:

 

"The name Gravesham appears only in the Domesday Book, 1086, and was probably the error of a Norman scribe. It was 'Gravesend' in the Domesday Monarchorum c.1100, and 'Gravesende' in the Textus Roffensis c.1100. It is strange that this 'clerical error' has now been adopted for the name of the new Council".

 

And also from wikipedia:

 

The town is recorded as Gravesham in the Domesday Book in 1086 as belonging to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and called "Gravesham": a name probably derived from "graaf-ham": the home of the Reeve, or Bailiff, of the Lord of the Manor. Another theory suggests that the name Gravesham may be a corruption of the words grafs-ham — a place "at the end of the grove". Myth has it that Gravesend got its name because, during the outbreak of Bubonic Plague in the 1600s, the town was the place where victims were no longer buried on land — they were buried at sea (the town sits next to the Thames Estuary).

 

I hear that plague rubbish all the time, but if anyone really cared, it would have taken them about 20 secs to find that out.

 

Whatever next? Canary Islands named after dogs??

[thatguy]

Typical Beeb, forget the research and go with myths. I have lost how many times I have had this argument with work colleagues that gravesend is not where the graves ended from the great plague, but they have none of it. They will just say that if the bbc say its true, then its true.