Mr. Spock of Star Trek visited a remote planet in the far reaches of the universe where all the inhabitants were made of india rubber. He made love to a beautiful woman and told her: ”Now all your descendants will be vulcanized.” Just before the Battle of Hastings, one of William the Conqueror‘s chief lieutenants was grumbling to his squire about the lousy horse he had been given. He complained: ”Nobody would turn a knight out on a dog like this!” A British government survey in 1926 to try and determine future population trends discovered that 64.8 per cent of all the women in Britain aged between 20 and 55 had only ever slept with one man. Does anyone know who the greedy so-and-so was? Did you know that...if all the genealogists in the world who fall asleep in front of their computers at 2.0 o‘clock in the morning were laid end to end they‘d be a lot more comfortable? George Sand (1804-1876), the celebrated French novelist, was as famous for her love affairs with prominent artistic figures as she was for her writing. Amongst others, she had a long relationship wtih the composer Frederic Chopin. So that‘s where the term, the ”sex and shoppin' novel" came from? An Irishman was descended from a long line of literature-loving ancestors who instilled in him a deep knowledge of the classics. One day he went for a job on a building site and the foreman said he must ask him a question or two to make sure he was qualified.”Do you know the difference between a girder and a joist?" the foreman asked. ”Ah, to be sure, that‘s an easy one," the Irishman said. ”Goethe wrote Faust and Joyce wrote Ulysses." An ancestor of mine was killed at the Battle of the Little Big Horn with General Custer. Big mistake, really. He was brewing tea in the next field and only went over to borrow a cup of sugar. Roy Stockdill Editor, The Journal of One-Name Studies The Stockdill Family History Society (Guild of One-Name Studies, FedFHS) STOCKDILL PREST YELLOW BOLTON WORSNOP GIBSON MIDGLEY BRACEWELL SHACKLETON BRADLEY MOODY in Yorkshire North & West Ridings MEAD YOUNG in Somerset, Wiltshire & Gloucestershire Web page of the Stockdill Family History Society:- http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/roystock ”Never ask a man if he comes from Yorkshire. If he does he will tell you. If he does not, why humiliate him?" - Canon Sydney Smith (scholar and humorist 1771-1845)