history

Christopher Shakespeare - Publisher: Book Guild Publishing, available from Amazon ISBN: 978 1 910 878 30 9 Price: £12.99 

  The Tomb of Tu Duc (Vietnamese: Lăng Tự Đức) is located in Hue, Vietnam. It is built for the Nguyen Emperor Tu Duc. The tomb took three years to build from 1864–1867 and is divided into a Temple Area and a Tomb Area. 

‘White Christmas’ is a 1942 Irving Berlin song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting. According to the Guinness World Records, the version sung by Bing Crosby is the best-selling single of all time, with estimated sales in excess of 100 million copies worldwide.

The bauble is one of the most popular Christmas ornament picture of Victoria's Christmas tree was shown in a London newspaper decorated with glass ornaments and baubles from her husband Prince Albert's native Germany, Lauscha began exporting its products throughout Europe. 

‘There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.’

Born in Rugeley, Staffordshire, on 6th August 1824 William Palmer was the sixth of eight children to Sarah and Joseph Palmer. His father worked as a sawyer, and died when William was 12 years old, leaving Sarah with a legacy of some £70,000. 

Joseph Carey Merrick was born on the 5th of August 1862 at 50, Lee Street, in Leicester, to Joseph Rockley Merrick and his wife Mary Jane (née Potterton). He was born, apparently healthy, and had no outward symptoms of any disorder for the first few years of his life.

Roughly 100,000 British and German troops were involved in the unofficial cessations of hostility along the Western Front. The first truce started on Christmas Eve 1914, when German troops decorated the area around their trenches in the region of Ypres, Belgium and particularly in Saint-Yvon. 

The only item of coronation regalia to survive the destruction at the end of the Civil War was the Coronation Spoon. Clement Kynnersley, who had bought it at the 1649 sale, returned the unique 12th-century gold spoon back to King Charles II.

A wedding dress is the clothing worn by a bride during a wedding ceremony. The colour, style and ceremonial importance of the gown can depend on the religion and culture of the wedding participants.