Jimmy Hall

How did this pass me by!

A sample of the hoard.

In my very own county of Staffordshire a mammoth hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure was discovered late last year.  David Starkey tritely puts it as “Gangland bling” in a more recent article.  Astonishingly, it’s the largest ever find of gold and silver in the British Isles with some 1,800 objects excavated by the end of the dig.  There’s an excellent interactive description of the find provided by The Guardian.  To give you some idea of the value of the hoard, around three years back a piece of a hilt of an Anglo-Saxon sword was bought by the British Museum for £125,000  – this hoard contains 31 such pieces.  Even with my basic maths skills, I can work that out to be nearly £4 million.  That’s just for the bits of poxy sword, never mind the gold and silver!

Found a link to this YouTube clip on the Derren Brown Blog. It’s a video of the highest man made point in the world.   The point is at the tip of the radio mast at the top of the Burj Tower in Dubai.  Apparently, it’s more than half a mile high at 2,684 feet (818 metres) and a bit wobbly.

I found the whole thing gut-wrenchingly awful to watch, especially when he pokes the camera over the side.  However, there’s no denying it’s a wonderful piece of engineering and the whole project cost an absolute forturne ($4.1 billion).  It’s estimated to be completed in early 2010.