Stan Bowes, from Diggle, has uncovered some interesting and entertaining facts – youjust couldn’t make them up.
THE ASSOCIATION of British Travel Agents held an outstanding conference in Sorrento, Italy, in 1985.
Their conference train was delayed at Purley and the flight from Gatwick was delayed because of fog: most delegates arrived a day late.
Then so many went down with food poisoning that the conference doctor got a special mention in the closing address.
Two delegates were injured falling down stairs, and the Marketing Director of Kuoni Travel developed septicaemia following a snake bite.
The organisers of the annual golf tournament arrived to find there wasn’t a golf course in Sorrento, so that event was held later in Dublin.
It was left to the inventive genius of the Italians to really make the event memorable.
With a multitude of marching bands and ceremonial guards, the Italian Development Minister addressed the delegates in the forum in Pompeii – at which point local travel agent Lucio Aponte had decided to drop thousands of roses onto the assembly, from a light aircraft.
Even flying so low that delegates ended up crouching, after five passes the pilot missed the forum entirely, only succeeding in drowning out the Minister’s speech and covering Vesuvius with roses.
Improve your vocabulary
Barmy: Mad, crazy, stupid, silly. Probably less common than it used to be, but with an interesting origin. Barm is a yeast used brewing, and also the froth that forms on the top of fermenting malt liquors. From this latter, barmy came to be applied to people who had a frothy top!
Bumbershoot: Another name for an umbrella
Apophthegms
Death is a once in a lifetime experience.
Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest.
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